


Do Not Speak Against the Sun

by Auntarctica



Category: DmC: Devil May Cry
Genre: First Time, M/M, Twincest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-03 16:37:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 47,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21182588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Auntarctica/pseuds/Auntarctica
Summary: He knew that with a single act, Vergil had just broken his world. A world held together with duct tape and spite, but his world, nonetheless; the scaffold he'd hung his life upon.





	1. Chapter 1

Who are you?  
Creation's spoiled darlings  
among the first to be perfect...  
pockets of essence  
ecstasy shields  
tumultuous storms  
of delightful feelings  
then suddenly  
separate  
mirrors  
gathering the beauty  
that streamed away from them  
back to their own faces again.  
  
— Rainer Maria Rilke

Night fell hard on Limbo City, like it always did.

If not for the stunning sunset that briefly surged through the wide-open sky before him, Dante wouldn’t have noticed—the darkness spilling after, like ink down the alleyways, beating the city black and blue; holding it hostage, smothered beneath the blanket of night, riddled with lights like bullet holes, or a thousand cigarette burns.

Down below the streets still teemed with neon and vice, as humans in thrall went on living in oblivion, each chasing their chosen opiate, hapless and chained by their distraction. His whole life he’d walked among them; an outsider. Alone in a crowd, but never apart from its cacophony.

Here and now, in Vergil’s ivory tower—this sanctuary, high above the sedated masses—the spreading metropolis was reduced to a distant, silent ballet of cars blazing and slowing, surrounded by a backdrop of glittering lights that stood in for the absent stars above. Even the blaring billboards seemed quaint at this vantage. Virility™ had gone dark, city-wide, but there were others; bright lies that could only be read for truth through the dark lens of Limbo.

He’d never known a calm or a solitude like this, not once in his entire life of institutional indenture. Institutions were quiet, sometimes—during lights out, or lockdown—but never serene, never tranquil. Dante could actually feel the thrum of his heart, deep and slow, luxuriating in its new circumstance, and he knew beyond a doubt that it existed, for the first time since the day he’d literally ripped his own chest open to check.

He was sprawled in his brother’s rolling chair before the glow of a sleek, gleaming monitor, reading Vergil’s beautiful propaganda in the electric twilight. And it was beautiful; his brother had a way with words, with the turn of a phrase—the kiss to the knuckles and the twist that set it spinning. It was the kind of writing that drew you along from word to word, until you forgot you were reading words at all. The kind of writing that felt like it bloomed right there in your own mind, like thoughts that had always been there, but had just been dusted off, uncovered, and presented to you; a priceless gift you’d never known you already owned.

Dante heard the mechanical symphony of the lumbering industrial lift long before it reached the top, settling even with the wide-plank floors with a jostle that was becoming familiar. He glanced up as the cage rolled open and his brother emerged. Casually lashed into his tailored peacoat, he cut an unmistakable figure.

“I’m back.”

“I noticed.”

Staring past the monitor, he saw Vergil’s reflection in the many-paned ceiling-high steel factory windows that faced the city, a snowy-headed and silvery sketch hovering in the night sky outside, like his phantom in Limbo.

Windows made up most of the walls of his brother’s makeshift industrial penthouse, which took up an entire floor, boasting views on all sides. Cityscape, waterfront, bridge, mountain range; each equally spectacular in its own way, depending on the hour. By now, he’d had the opportunity to appreciate them all.

Dante appreciated this view the most.

He’d only known his brother for a handful of days, but in that scant time certain facts had shaken out between them. He’d gone to group homes and mental hospitals and juvenile hall; Vergil had gone to prep school and the Ivy League. Vergil had millions acquired through his brilliance, which had allowed him to also secure their inheritance, but was willing and eager to share the legacy. Their legacy, he insisted, with that strange, rapt fervency that made him so compelling. So believable.

At first it had made Dante uneasy, how much he believed Vergil. How much he wanted to trust him, and how defensive that immediate, intrinsic instinct made him. But his brother had won him over, steady and unwavering, clear-eyed and patient, his hand outstretched, like a man content to wait for a wary stray to tame itself.

“Hope you’re hungry.”

“Starving.” Dante rubbed his neck and flicked his eyes down to the screen, but they soon drifted back to the glass, surreptitiously watching as his brother set down the bag he’d been carrying, unwound his scarf and shed his coat. The scarf was for show, Dante knew; it wasn’t that cold out yet. It looked good on him, though.

Now he was stripped down to the Vergil that Dante saw the most of late; not the straight-backed, cleanly-bound, calm-browed leader of the Order, crisp and smooth in his pseudo-paramilitary aesthetic, but the man beneath the sartorial armor; intimate and at ease in narrow pinstriped pants that lost their dress pretentions without the black jacquard formality of the double-buttoned coat. His body-skimming sweater was a dark heathered garnet that clung to his sculpted arms and had the look of something that was thin and light because it was expensive, and not the opposite.

It had a low V-neck, made deeper by the pull of his broad shoulders and chest. Dante eyed that in spite of himself, as Vergil unpacked the bag onto the polished concrete island of the open kitchen space.

“I picked up some sashimi—is that all right? I don’t have it in me to bother with rolls tonight, so I thought we’d just do chirashi bowls. They had real sawa wasabi root, though. Freshly grated, there’s just no comparison. You’ll see; it’s great. You’ll never want to go back to fake chartreuse hot mustard again. You’ll have to, though, because the real thing’s so hard to find.”

“Whatever you say,” said Dante. _All the stuff you’ve made so far has been amazing_, remained unsaid on the edge of his tongue until it passed its speak-by date, fading back up into his mind, the sentence dissembling once more into singular words for later use.

The first night he’d come to the Order, Kat and Vergil had brought him here, to the top floor of the warehouse next door, to Vergil’s loft apartment. It was nothing like the dark, ominous, workmanlike garage, or the barrack-like communal accommodations above it, used by unobtrusive members of the organization who came and went at all hours of the day and night, seemingly self-directed by no more than a deep understanding of his brother’s bidding.

With its panoramic sweep of the metropolis and the soundless streets far below, it seemed set among the clouds—a brick and concrete heaven with thirty-foot ceilings and weathered wooden floors warmed by antique Turkish rugs and white floor-to-ceiling curtains.

“Quite the catbird seat,” he’d said slowly, taking it in.

“More like a crows’ nest,” said Kat, obviously proud of their headquarters, and her boss. “This building is Vergil’s. We only rent the other one. Under an alias, of course.”

Dante glanced at him. “You own it?”

“My name’s not on it, but…through a complicated series of shells, yes, I technically do. The nice part is, there’s plenty of room.”

“Yeah, I’ll say.”

“You can take the bed,” Vergil said, at once, nodding toward the stairs that led to the loft. “The sheets are fresh,” he added, as if that was something Dante should care about.

Or maybe, in hindsight, it was his way of saying he’d always known Dante would stay, or at least that he’d hoped; cared enough to have a place all ready for him to crash.

“I’ll take the couch,” said Dante, nodding at one of the stylishly mismatched vintage leather chesterfields. Camel and cordovan. Force of habit made him say it; self-preserving isolationism, even though he was exhausted from the carnival brawl, and a newly-made bed sounded better than anything he could imagine. His own bed was decidedly unmade at the moment, somewhere in the poetic wreck of his upside-down trailer, and he knew the sheets were far from fresh.

Vergil nodded, seemingly understanding. “Suit yourself. We’ve got plenty of bedding. It won’t be for long, anyway. Just until we get you your own bed. Your own space.” He hesitated. “If you want it.”

“Couch is fine. Doesn’t matter how long.”

“I went back,” broke in Kat. “To the pier, to get your things. Clothes, necessities.”

“I told her it was too risky,” said Vergil, with a sigh. “But she’d already done it.”

“I don’t own much. But that’s great. Thanks.” Dante gave her a genuinely appreciative nod.

“I was able to gather most of it.” She reached up into her hood, self-consciously tucking a slipped strand of hair behind her ear. “I even found your toothbrush in the road, but I figured you wouldn’t want it. So I picked you up a new one. It’s in the bag.”

Dante smiled. “Good thing you went back instead of me. I’d have probably just rinsed it off and used it anyway. Three-hour rule, right?”

“Thanks, Kat.” Vergil turned his attention to Dante. “Anything else you need, say the word and we’ll get it. In the meantime, use whatever you want. What’s mine is yours, brother.”

“Thanks,” said Dante. It was disconcerting being the sole focus of that intense gaze, so like his own, familiar yet foreign. His body responded in ways he didn’t want to acknowledge. “I don’t need a lot.”

“I know you’re probably tired,” Vergil said, “but you really should eat something. We all should.”

“We could just order a pizza,” Dante said. “I’m not picky.”

“We don’t really take deliveries here. We take precautions. But we can do take-out.”

“I can go pick it up—” volunteered Kat, immediately.

Dante raised a hand in protest. “No, Kat, you stay. You’ve done enough. I’ll do it.”

“We should probably all lie low tonight, and not go out if we can help it. Especially Dante. Let’s see what I’ve got on hand.” Vergil scanned the contents of the vintage refrigerator with the acuity of a sharpshooter. “All right, how about this: shirred eggs in cream with…sautéed chanterelles, chèvre and cubed pancetta. Maybe a little fresh arugula over the top. Voilà. Breakfast for dinner.”

“You can make that?”

“Vergil’s an amazing cook,” Kat enthused, starry-eyed.

Dante shook his head. “Doesn’t sound like any breakfast I ever had.”

“It’s really more like brunch…” said Kat.

Vergil frowned, brow knitting, pursing his lips slightly. “Let me see what else I can do—”

“No,” Dante said, quickly. “That sounds incredible, whatever it is. I just meant…I never had it so good.”

Vergil paused, hand on the refrigerator door, and turned to look at him, slowly. “Neither of us have ever had it this good, Dante.” His voice was shot through with low, unguarded warmth and raw sincerity. “We’ve both been deprived; in different ways, I’ll grant you. But we’re together now.”

Now was good.

They had fallen into some strange semblance of normalcy, between insurrections, between missions. Vergil was a gracious host, sharing his refuge readily, generous with everything, including his inner sanctum. He was so matter-of-fact in this that Dante never felt like an intruder in his space, never like a black sheep, or just a useful relic salvaged from the wreck of their past. His brother always seemed as happy to see him as he had the first time, which was to say almost elated. It never seemed forced, never like an act. And eventually, Dante could no longer bring himself to doubt his sincerity.

Against his will, it was beginning to feel like a home to him. Not just one he recognized from the outside, pressed against the glass, like a kid staring at a diorama in a department store window, but one he could actually touch. One that could touch him in turn.

One that wanted to.

By now, he knew: it wasn’t so much the Order that felt like home, or the penthouse in the clouds, but Vergil himself. It had been surreal to discover how easily he’d folded into his brother’s life—he, who’d never fit in anywhere—and how fully Vergil embraced him in turn. And with that came the sobering realization of just how big the missing piece had been, and the grief he’d never known enough to feel. Something far greater than a lost limb, and more like a soul, brutally cloven; cauterized only by artificial amnesia. Less an amputation and more a vivisection. They’d been robbed of it all, both the damage and its mourning.

But they were together, now. Even more so in this oddly contented moment, as Vergil idly put things in order and he pretended to read. Just the two of them. In the next moment, Dante realized it was true literally, and not just figuratively.

“Where’s Kat?” he asked, absently.

In his peripheral vision, Vergil glanced at him. “In her own quarters, I imagine. Just below mine. Why?”

“Just wondering. Kinda weird that she hasn’t come up. She’s like a little moon, orbiting you. Or a satellite or something.” He rubbed his head slowly, studying the screen without really seeing it. “It’s sorta cute.”

“Kat’s great. The best acolyte a guy could ask for. But I want you and I to spend more time together, one on one. Get to know each other again.”

“Yeah,” said Dante, a beat late, surprised. “Sure thing.”

Not that they could have known each other all that well to begin with, at seven. The memories he’d unearthed at Paradise Manor were staggering but incomplete; fragments and details were still working themselves free from the newly softened walls of his mind, emerging now and then like shrapnel. But when they did, they were vivid—saturated and rich and alive as baroque tableaux. They came to him spontaneously, the longer they hung around each other. Small, sweet frescoes of their shared past. Moments he’d enshrined as a child.

He remembered Vergil as a solemnly smiling white-haired boy; a brother who shared his face if not his nature. More than a playmate. A companion, a counterpart.

It was hard to reconcile those nascent memories with the young man who stood before him now, but every day brought them closer.

“Your eyes must be tired. I got more coffee beans. You want me to pull you a shot?”

“Nah,” Dante said distractedly. “I’m good.” His eyes found the text once more, as if he hadn’t already finished. As if he hadn’t read it through twice while Vergil was gone.

“Well, what do you think?” Vergil’s hands came to rest on him, as he came up behind Dante’s chair. His voice was sober; clear and sedulous as ever. It came to Dante’s ears on low, warm wings in the dim blue light of the vast room, giving the cavernous silence of the loft a cozy intimacy it hadn’t won and didn’t deserve.

Dante closed his eyes briefly, as his breath caught, willing himself not to tense, weathering his body’s response until his throat unlocked enough to answer. _I can’t_, he wanted to say. _I can’t think when you do that._

That was something about Vergil—the way he’d nonchalantly touch Dante whenever it struck him to do so, like there was nothing to it. Like it was the most natural thing in the world. Even now, he was kneading Dante’s bare shoulders with studiously absent affection.

There’d been no one in Dante’s life who touched him as easily and impulsively as Vergil did. No one that wasn’t a woman, a one-night-stand, and usually a professional. It was always on the house, in his case, but those torrid, throwaway interludes were the extent of what had passed for physical contact in his life thus far. Their caresses, while effusive and even sincere, felt confusing in hindsight, transient and cheap compared to the honest, potent affection that emanated from his brother.

He was conscious of Vergil’s scent, and Vergil’s brawny presence; that his brother’s nitrile gloves and the scant straps of his own well-worn wifebeater were the last tenuous barrier between his flesh and Vergil’s palms. He was all too aware that without them he would be fully skin-to-skin with his sudden brother. He was afraid to find out how cataclysmic that might be.

“You read it, right?” Vergil’s long, strong fingers eased casually into his muscle on both sides with deft, brusque affection, as he shifted to get a better look at the screen. “Tell me what you really think, Dante. I can handle it.”

In spite of his best intentions, Dante felt himself responding, the way he had from the beginning, from the moment he’d first locked eyes with his brother. His heart might have been guarded, his mind undecided, but his body had never been more certain.

He could sense Vergil behind him as he leaned in, presence joined by actual substance. His brother’s proximity brought a sudden stirring somewhere in the southern hemisphere. Vergil’s amulet grazed his back lightly, chills shooting through him as he stiffened in more ways than one.

Dante raised a hand, abruptly. “Look, if we’re going to do this, you need to not…touch me…like that.”

Vergil looked surprised, and a little chagrined. “I’m sorry, Dante,” he said, readily. “I was just being fraternal. Look, I know we don’t know each other that well yet. I shouldn’t have taken the liberty.”

“It’s not that, okay?” Dante stared down, hard, without seeing; at his fingers paused on the trackpad, at the artfully scarred table. That was the last thing he wanted Vergil to get from this, but there was no good way to break it to him, either—the kind of thoughts his own brother harbored, and the impulses he suppressed. That Dante was the amoral deviant he’d always been told he was destined to be.

“Whatever it is,” assured Vergil, “it’s all right.” He held up his palms with a smile—warm, if wistful, and a little bit brittle. “Hands off, brother. From now on. I promise.”

“That’s not the takeaway here,” Dante said, bluntly, still staring. “All right? Just…trust me.”

“I do,” said Vergil, simply, after a moment. “That’s why you’re here.”

Dante grasped the edges of the desk, shoving the chair back, bracing himself at arms’ length. “Vergil.”

His brother paused, waiting in silent expectation.

“When you touch me like that, it feels…wrong. I mean, not wrong, like repulsive or whatever. Just…right in the wrong way.” He paused, feeling his voice drop to the floor and roll into the shadows, picking up grit on the way. “Like a little too right, if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t.” Vergil gave an indulgent half-laugh. “But that’s okay. It bothers you, and that’s all you need to say, and all I need to know.”

Eyes closed, Dante cursed softly under his breath. He didn’t like letting that stand, not after Vergil had welcomed him back into his life with such open-armed acceptance. Vergil had searched for him. He had mattered to Vergil. He was hit by a sudden, vicious qualm, like a stitch in his side. He’d never had a brother. Never had anyone.

He couldn’t leave it there; leave Vergil with the idea that his affection was anathema, that his brotherly overtures were unwanted, and unwelcome. He needed to say a little more. Just enough to mitigate the damage, without betraying the depravity inside, whatever warped incestuous obsession his deprived mind was conjuring up out of oblivion, using nothing but the unwitting kindness and genuine interest his brother had shown him as incendiary grist for the fantasy mill.

Carefully, he let his lips part. The words came slowly, and he kept his eyes trained just this side of his brother’s gaze. “I guess I’ve just never had family. There was no one, and…I’m fucked up. I’m doing it wrong. I’ve got a loose wire or something. Crossed wires, maybe. I don’t know.”

“I don’t understand.” Vergil looked rapt and affable, as if he was trying to, as if he would genuinely like to. “But I imagine it must feel strange—”

“Strange isn’t the word.”

“Well, if it’s not strange, then I don’t see what—”

“It feels hot, Vergil,” Dante cut in abruptly, at last, unable to stand his brother’s reasonable, relentless probing. “There. You happy?”

“Hot?” Vergil looked mystified, like he’d never heard the word in a metaphorical sense before. Like he was thinking of the temperature. Which figured, because what normal mind would go to such a twisted place in this context?

“Jesus Christ, don’t make me say it.” Dante closed his eyes for a moment. His shoulders rose and fell with a heavy breath. “When you touch me, it…turns me on, and it shouldn’t.”

Vergil stared. “You’re aroused?” he said, sounding more fascinated than horrified. Dante didn’t speak right away, and in the next moment Vergil grasped the back of the chair and spun him around.

“Hey,” Dante protested.

Vergil swept his lucid gaze down the length of him, lingering a little lower than he liked. “Interesting.”

“Hey, what the hell. It’s not like it’s hard or something. I have some fucking self-control.” He was lying. It was, and he didn’t. Not when it came to this. Under the pale regard of his handsome brother’s scrutiny, the ache intensified. He shifted, glowering.

“If that’s how it looks just hanging around, then I’m happy for you, brother.”

“Maybe it is,” retorted Dante. He grabbed a dormant tablet from the table, holding it protectively over his lap. “Now stop looking at it.”

“Why?” Vergil’s smooth brow knit with curiosity. “Does it get harder when I do?”

“I’m not a fucking science project, this isn’t the fucking science fair, and you’re not building a scale model of my dick with baking soda and vinegar. You can stop with the clinical analysis. I’ve had enough of that in my life. Forget it, all right? Forget I said anything.”

“I’ve read about this.” Vergil was nodding, intently, with growing surety. “The Westermarck Effect. It’s quite common.”

“The hell is the Westermarck Effect?”

Vergil explained, as always, artless and sincere. “It’s a natural aversion that develops between kids who are raised together. Biologically, it evolved to discourage inbreeding, but it happens with non-related kids raised as siblings, too. I’ve read it’s often a problem in countries with arranged marriages, where the kids grow up together.”

Dante grimaced. “Cool story, bro.”

“It is a cool story.”

“Fine. What does it have to with my fucked-up boner?”

Vergil was eager to clarify. “Because when siblings aren’t raised together, there’s no Westermarck effect, and when they meet as adults, they often find themselves…attracted.”

Dante eyed him, suspicious that Vergil was just giving him shit, but it didn’t seem to jibe with his brother’s sense of humor as he knew it so far. “Are you serious?”

“Totally. You don’t see a sibling. All you see is someone who gets you. Who has the same habits and interests and mannerisms. Someone who understands you. Someone who feels like home. There’s even a name for it: GSA. Genetic—”

“But I do see a sibling.” Dante’s voice was low, his throat dry. Vergil was his brother; he was never more aware of the fact than at that moment. This close, his presence struck a carnal harmonic, thrumming throughout Dante’s body like resonant strings—whether they were heaven’s harps or hell’s violins, or both, joined in some unholy concerto, courtesy of their blasphemous hybrid pedigree.

_I don’t want you in spite of your being my brother. I want you because you are._

Vergil was warming to his idea. “It makes perfect sense. You and I were raised apart; not to mention the amnesia. Not only that, we didn’t even know the other existed. Until now.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Dante said it flatly, cupping the back of his neck uneasily. “I don’t think it’s just that, though.”

Vergil’s clear browed furrowed. “Why not?”

“Because it still wouldn’t account for…the guy thing. If you were a girl, right, it’d make sense. But I’ve never been into guys. I’m straight as it fucking gets.”

“Oh,” said Vergil. “I just assumed…”

“Assumed what?” It was Dante’s turn to stare.

“Well…” Vergil looked uncomfortable. Actually at odds; off his well-played game for a nice change of pace. “All that stuff Kat told me, with the strippers and such. I don’t know. It seemed a little…like compensation.”

“Compensation? Wait a fucking minute, are you saying you think I’m—” Dante broke off, newly incredulous. “It’s not like that, okay? I just don’t like complications. You thought I was into guys?”

“Well…no, not exactly. But it is the 21st century, after all. I just figured you were as flexible as anyone. Maybe just not as honest about it.”

“Are you?” Dante was still taken aback. “Into guys?”

“I’m not against it. I mean, I don’t get out much, obviously.” Vergil parted with a faint smile. “Work comes first.”

“What about Kat?”

“What about her?” For the first time, Vergil looked bewildered, and in the next beat his brother had moved past it, dismissing it outright, as if Dante had uttered a non sequitur to avoid the topic. “Dante, I had no idea you felt this way.”

“You found me in a fucking trailer. I guess you shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Why do you sound so bitter?”

“I don’t know, Vergil. Maybe because this bullshit universe finally gave me something, gave me a real-live brother, and half the time, all I can think about is what he’d look like naked. What he’s like when he fucks. When he comes. I don’t know, maybe it’s that.”

A beat passed. Vergil released a quiet breath. “That’s very specific.”

“Yeah, well, I know how you love details.”

Vergil hesitated. “Just tell me one thing, Dante. Is it really me you’re responding to? Or is it…something else?”

Dante couldn’t look at him. “No, it’s definitely you.”

The whole idea seemed to fascinate Vergil. He took a slow breath, looking almost exhilarated. “I think we should try.”

Dante stared. “Try what?”

“Being intimate.”

“You’re crazy.”

“On the contrary. I’ve never been more sane.”

Dante pushed to his feet. Vergil was slightly taller than him. He’d noticed it before, but now it made his pulse react, for reasons unknown. “Okay, whoa. You’re way off-script here, so let me help you hit your marks. This is where you tell me about the Westermarck Effect, and explain that it’s normal, and okay, and understandable, and certainly nothing to be ashamed of, but that nothing like that can ever happen between us.”

“Why not?”

“Why _not_? Because it’s wrong.”

“We’re not human, Dante. Who’s to say what’s right for us?”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”

“Dante, you don’t understand,” Vergil insisted. “Touch me. Go on. You’ll see.”

Dante frowned; followed Vergil’s unsubtle glance down to his slim, dark pants. Vergil reached for his hand, after a moment. “No,” he ripped out at once, indignant, jerking it back. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Just touch it.” Vergil was calm, reasonable.

“No.”

Vergil rolled his eyes. “Not for my benefit. I just want you to know…you’re not alone.”

_You’re not alone._

Slowly, Dante looked up, searching the endless intellectual winter of his brother’s gaze, finding only quiet sincerity there, like a campfire on the tundra.

It drew him in, against his will; made him want to move closer. To warm himself, after so long in the cold. It had been so long, he didn’t even realize he’d been freezing forever. It had just always been like this. Ever since he’d been a kid.

“Nothing we do is ever wrong, Dante.” Vergil was earnest, forward-leaning; handsome and clear-eyed as ever. “Everything we do is beautiful, reasonable. Perfect.” He laid a fraternal hand on Dante’s shoulder, lingering there. “How could our physical union be anything else?”

“Jesus Christ, are you hearing yourself?”

“I hear that you love me.”

“I never said—”

“But you do.”

Dante fell silent, staring.

“And I love you,” Vergil continued, as if no beat had been dropped.

He was overcome by the words, and the touch, and the way his brother looked in the moment, light eyes glowing with unvarnished truth, their luminous color offset against the brown-crimson sweater; how much greater than human his beauty could be, how robustly unearthly it was.

“I’ll say what I said before, Dante. Just give me a chance to show you.”

“Who I really am?”

“Who you are to me.”

Dante was conscious of the silence again, the utter serenity of their surroundings in counterpoint to the ragged beat of his heart; the way the faded world had been banished to the margins, as if they were the only two beings in existence. As if Vergil had that power, among his many others.

He closed his eyes. “You always make the worst shit sound like a great idea. How the hell do you do that?”

“I don’t know,” said Vergil. “It’s a gift, I guess.”

“Don’t you have enough of those yet?”

“Let me give you one.”

“You’ve given me plenty.”

Vergil paused. “How about a kiss from your little brother?”

Dante eyed him with acid skepticism. “We’re twins.” He lifted his chin to sling the last word.

Vergil smiled. “We are. But I was told you were born first.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Dante had always thought of himself as the world’s younger brother, last born and forgotten, left to his own devices, middle finger permanently extended. Vergil, in contrast, seemed to embody the magnus frater type, the universal big brother; poised and thoughtful, amused and indulgent, steady and sure.

“Who knows what’s true.” Vergil’s shrug was careless, dismissive. “The records are…nonexistent. Memories are only so reliable, and the rest is hearsay. The only truth we can confirm is the one in front of us.” He paused. “What we can touch, Dante.”

A shiver went through Dante that his body didn’t betray.

Vergil held his gaze for a beat longer. “Wait here,” he said, then turned and went back to the kitchen. He pulled down a couple of shot glasses from the open shelves, then ducked to retrieve a bottle from under the island. He uncapped it with a minimal twist of his wrist and returned to Dante, who hadn’t moved a muscle except to breathe.

He eyed Vergil warily as he poured. “What’s this?”

“Rye.”

“What for?”

“One for you, one for me. We drink, and I kiss you. Then we’ll know. Bottoms up.”

He held it out. Dante took it, staring across at him; uncertain but defiant.

Vergil faced him, raising his glass. “To brotherhood,” he said, as their eyes met.

They drank. Dante tossed it back like medicine and slammed the glass down like a gavel, feeling the burning warmth bloom through a body already half on fire. Vergil drank his more mindfully, savoring it in a long, single swallow, eyes closed. Then he set it on the table and moved in close, at once.

Violins swelled. Among other things.

If he’d expected his brother to hesitate, he clearly didn’t know him well enough yet.

Vergil’s hand clasped the back of his neck, a fraternal gesture transformed in the alchemy of context, by the nature of intent. He drew their faces near and lingered there, letting their breath war softly, in pulses of heightening counterpoint, lips parted, hovering just shy of Dante’s. Too close to see his lambent eyes, but close enough to feel them.

Dante fought the urge to flinch away from the intimacy of it.

He lost that fight in the next swallowed breath, turning his cheek all at once, gaze shooting down and angling to the side. Seeing nothing, as before, but unable to the stand the onus of the moment; his brother’s undivided attention, and the inevitable intention behind it.

He felt Vergil’s gloved hand take his face, guiding it back to meet the heat of his alabaster brow and Roman-shaven cheek. His thumb slowly stroked the side of Dante’s throat, a touch that was both hard promise and soft reassurance.

_He’s really gonna do this._

When Vergil pulled the trigger, it was like a bolt went through him.

His brother’s lips were lush and full, as he angled to catch Dante’s mouth on the bias, warm and smooth as they parted in an obscenely fond caress, cupping and stroking his own.

He was aware of everything, all at once—all of it warmth, from the unexpected tenderness of Vergil’s approach, to the distinctly male fusion of musk and cologne that rose from his shoulders and chest, emanating from the skin beneath his sweater.

It took everything he had not to seize Vergil by the front of it. Take this somewhere rougher, more transactional—to a place he understood. Instead he kept his hands at his sides and let himself be kissed, grasping the edges of the desk to keep them down.

He knew that with a single act, Vergil had just broken his world.

A world held together with duct tape and spite, but his world, nonetheless; the scaffold he’d hung his life upon.

Vergil’s lips left his, as he pulled back just enough to speak. “Interesting.” It was a near-whisper. His pulse seemed heightened, his light eyes slightly hectic. “Well, that answers that question.” He breathed out slowly. “For me at least.”

In the next moment his hand fell away from Dante’s neck, and he turned, drifting thoughtfully across the room, peeling off his gloves.

Dante stared after him. “What, no tongue?” he managed to bite out, reverting to the instincts that had served him up until now, to force insouciance; insolence at any cost. He stood there, left undone, in a limbo of a different kind, not even sure what conclusion Vergil had drawn. Holding the pieces of himself together with the all-purpose epoxy of sarcasm. “You call that a kiss?”

Vergil smiled absently. “You can’t begin at forte, Dante. It leaves you nowhere to go.”

“And where are we going, exactly?” He could hear the low tremor in his own voice, taut and demanding, restrained on the tightest leash he could muster.

“I’m going upstairs.”

Dante followed Vergil’s gaze to the loft. The words were cryptic, ambiguous, and he wasn’t sure which way he was supposed to interpret them. But in the next moment his brother spoke again, removing all doubt.

“You can join me if you want to. I hope you will, of course—but I understand if you don’t. Take your time. The night is young, and I’ll wait. If you come, we can explore this further. If you don’t, we’ll never speak of it again. Everything as it was, brother. You have my word.”

Dante held fast, moored in place, watching him go—silently wrestling with the tangle of alien emotions his brother’s lips had conjured forth. Grappling in the wake of his withdrawal, and with him, his ineffable shadow; the silent blue-dark swath of velvet reason and the gracious, assiduous tendrils of affection that quietly embraced Dante by inches, killing him with kindness, persuading away his defenses, convincing him to hand over his armor, piece by piece.

He’d never felt anything like it. Never responded to anything, or anyone, like this. Was it only that he’d never known love? Did he have it twisted?

Was it unnatural? Or merely supernatural?

“If we’re not human, does your Westermarck Effect even have any meaning?” He couldn’t sieve the cynicism from the words, but his resistance was in ruins, and his brother surely knew it.

“Maybe not,” admitted Vergil, pausing at the staircase. “But that’s just it, Dante. Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter. In this entire world and that one, on earth, and in Limbo, there are but two Nephilim. We’re _species nova_. What’s true for you and me is, de facto, right and natural. Universal, because it’s the only truth possible.”

When he was gone, Dante felt himself buckle back against the desk, letting it hold his weight. Cursing his brother. All too aware that he was still painfully hard. He breathed out in a shudder, running a slow hand over his head, as his eye fell on the bottle Vergil had left.

He turned to grab it, facing the desk; poured himself another shot and swore as he downed it. Then he poured a third. Falling forward on his hands for moment, he slowly raised his head to confront his own reflection in the glass. His dark hair was disheveled from his brother’s hands. The conflict in his pale eyes was clear, but so was the desire.

_Okay, Vergil. Show me._

He scrubbed a hand over his face, swallowed the whiskey, pushed back from the desk and went.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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	2. Chapter 2

Do not burden his buoyant hands, for perhaps  
those very hands might materialize

to painfully examine you by night,  
to go raging through the household,  
clutching as if they created you, and might  
in this manner break you out of your mold.

Rilke, _The Angel _

  
He slowly climbed the open staircase beside the giant windows, eyes on the loft above, following Vergil’s ascent. Outside, fog and rain conspired, glazing the world into an abstract painting; a wash of dark tones from sky to street that deepened as it descended, daubed and streaked with neon here and there, low on the horizon.

Dante didn’t know when the downpour had started, only that it was here now—and that its cold, relentless reality was strangely detached from his. His trailer had been relatively sound, all told, but small and exposed as it was, being inside during a storm still felt like lying cheek and jowl with the elements. Even with no leaks, and the heat cranked up to eleven, it was ultimately only a glorified shell. On ugly nights it still felt damp and chill, tenuous as an animal den in comparison to the warm, stable civilization he now found himself within.

At the top of the stairs, he stopped. The lights were low. His brother was standing by the wall of windows, looking out over the city. He turned, as if aware he was no longer alone. “Dante.”

“Uh, yeah.” Sardonic, Dante juggled a shrug. “Who else?”

Vergil huffed out a soft laugh. All his gibes and slights seemed to slide off his brother like water, like the rain now running rivulets down the factory windows. He didn’t even walk them off; he just took them in stride, almost like he understood their genesis, and the motive beneath. He gestured to the glass. “It looks beautiful like this. From a distance.”

“Thought you’d be naked,” Dante said.

Vergil gazed at him. “That can be arranged,” he said, slowly.

The bedroom was sleek, but not sterile, in keeping with his brother’s general aesthetic; the fusion of classicalism and classical modernism, extending the themes of the lower level upward, culminating in this heaven-within-a-heaven.

Dante took it all in for a moment, conspicuously, turning in a slow circle, letting his eyes roam the weathered industrial brick and painted-steel panes, the single, massive, rustic wooden pillar off to one side and the giant minimalist painting on the long wall. Here in the loft the wood-beamed ceilings were lower, closer, though still at least ten feet high. Against a back wall of brick, the bed was low and vast, an unstructured tumble of sumptuous raw linen that surprised him with its primitive decadence. It looked lux and inviting—nothing like the sharp, spartan, immaculate expanse and military corners he realized he’d vaguely been expecting. A faux-fur throw lay haphazardly across the foot of it, lending texture; an opulent counterpoint to the unassuming naturalism of the duvet.

A trio of mismatched, battered white neoclassical columns stood in the corner beside the headboard, like a strange, oversized bouquet; architectural salvage his brother must have appreciated. 

His eyes fell, and lingered, on the chair in the other corner, high-concept and dramatically square, sleek and rich but restrained in cognac-colored leather. Vergil followed his gaze. “You like that.” It was an acknowledgement, not a question, and it came with a note of approval. “It’s a Mies van der Rohe. He was a stalwart of Bauhaus design.”

“Yeah?”

“He designed that for Knoll, circa 1968. It’s a vintage original. I think it’s got an incredible form.”

“You like form, huh.” 

Dante reached one arm back, grasped his nape and stripped off his grey tank, hauling it forward over his head and flinging it aside, ruffling his mohawk in the process. Vergil seemed taken aback, his eyes zeroing down to Dante’s bared torso, and lingering there.

“Normally I’d just take it all off and get down to it.” Dante threw away a gesture, like he’d thrown away the shirt. “But somehow that doesn’t seem right here.”

Vergil nodded slowly. “Then do what’s right.” That nano-smile was back on his brother’s lips, nearly imperceptible.

Dante cast about a little, rubbing a hand over his stomach muscles. “How do you want to do this?”

Vergil laughed for real this time, with a hint of exasperation in his pitch. “First off, stop acting like I hired you.” He drew closer. “I’m your brother, Dante.”

“Yeah, Vergil—that’s actually more fucked up, not less. I’m still not sure you get this.”

His brother’s expression was calm, almost wistful. “Our heritage, our entire being, hangs on the ultimate taboo, Dante—the marriage of heaven and hell—and you think it’s wrong for me to love you this way?” He shook his head. “I ask you: how could I love anyone else?”

Dante swallowed, staring; almost glowering. “You keep saying that word.”

“I say the words I mean.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you say that one a little too easily.”

“Far from it,” said Vergil, gazing into his eyes with fervid sincerity. “I’ve never said it to anyone in my life.”

Dante let his breath out, feeling the snakelike shiver in it.

Vergil drew closer, keeping a slight distance that was somehow no less electric. They gazed at each other like bookends, like the lions outside the museum that Dante had never been in, but was sure Vergil had. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “You can trust me. Have I ever let you down?”

“No.”

“No. And what’s more, I never will.”

“If we do this,” said Dante, abruptly, “and it gets to that, I’m on top.”

Vergil blinked. “Sure,” he said. “Whatever you want.” His brother seemed, as usual, serene and self-assured, supremely unconcerned about such petty distinctions. 

Willing to indulge him, humor him. 

_There’s no way I was born first._

“—But I want you to know I’ve no expectations. It doesn’t have to go that far.”

Dante snorted softly. “I don’t really go halfway. I only have two settings: all in, or out.”

“All right, then.” Vergil spread his hands. “So be it.”

“What the hell is wrong with you? You shouldn’t be so happy about this.”

“Happy? Hardly.” Vergil moved closer. “I’m ecstatic, Dante.”

Dante shook his head, disbelieving.

His brother’s expression shifted, subtly. “But I don’t want this if you don’t.”

“I wouldn’t be here if some part of me didn’t want this.” _And that part is every._

“Some part. I suppose that’s enough.”

“It’s enough.”

Vergil was silent for a long moment. “You’re beautiful,” he said, finally. 

Dante had no idea how to respond to something so brutal. “I know,” he said. “Lucky you, huh.”

“And listen, if what you said to Kat was true—about liking it rough. That’s fine. You can be as rough as you want, with me.”

“We’ll see,” Dante said, swallowing.

“I want you to have everything you need, Dante.” 

It was something, watching Vergil’s full-lipped mouth form those words. His sculpted face, luminous in the semidarkness, his smooth brow and cheekbones. It was something, all right.

“I don’t know what I need.” 

“Then what do you want?”

“Just to touch you, I guess.”

“Touch me, then.” 

Vergil said it like an invitation, not a challenge. Dante was hamstrung for a moment before he defaulted, falling back on audacity. Somehow it was easier to be goaded into action than given permission.

“Nice shirt.” Brazenly, he reached out to trace the fine knit with insolent fingers. “What is it?”

“Cashmere,” murmured Vergil, as he captured Dante’s hand, caging it warmly beneath his own. Guiding it slowly over his chest, under the auspices of urging him to feel it. “You like it? You can have it, if you want it.”

Dante suppressed the unexpected chills that coursed through him at the all-too-earthly feel of the taut, masculine breast just beneath the soft-spun fibers. “The fuckin’ shirt off your back? Really?” He paused. “Or did you mean something else?”

“Either way, what’s mine is yours. I don’t say things I don’t mean, Dante.”

Dante couldn’t look at him anymore. He flung his gaze to the side. “You want some advice? Be less nice, Vergil. Less perfect. Less naïve. Be more like the rest of us.”

“I’m neither perfect, nor naïve. I’m just an optimist. An idealist.”

“And I’m just saying, this world’s a trash fire. You could stand to be a little more cynical.”

Vergil studied him soberly. “How’d that work out for you?”

Dante snorted. “I’m alive, aren’t I? Alive for you to find.”

“Are you sure?”

“Am I sure I’m alive? What kind of a question is that?” He was half afraid Vergil was going to pull some shadowy spook shit like he did at Paradise, throw him into some new vision quest or drop some freshly fucked-up knowledge about their past. He couldn’t imagine anything worse than completing some demon-studded Ultimate Ninja Warrior course with a raging boner.

Vergil’s hand shifted as his thumb eased beneath, stroking the sensitive inner skin of Dante’s wrist, then slowly pressing in against the pulse point. He leaned in to whisper, letting his lips graze the shell of Dante’s ear. “I think I feel something.” 

His other hand stole onto Dante’s chest, grazing his nipple, lightly cupping the hard rise of his bare pectoral. “Oh yes,” Vergil said. “You’re definitely alive.”

Dante felt a riot rise up throughout his body, cheers and carnage, fires flaring everywhere from flung Molotov cocktails, the insurrection led by the sudden pounding charge of his nihilist heart as it desperately beat itself against the cage in his chest, determined to fling itself headlong into the palm of his brother’s hand.

“Although I should probably confirm one more test point just to be thorough—” His brother’s hand eased southward, swiftly.

Instinctively he reached out, seizing Vergil by his wrist, arresting it, his grip bruising. His brother’s pulse was strong; steady and forthright beneath his fingers. He inclined his face to Vergil’s, a silent, infinitesimal alignment that brought them to the edge of critical mass.

They lingered there, eyes downcast, brow to brow, nose to nose, each pulse of breath soft and enticing against Dante’s conflicted lips. He’d always liked that mouth on himself; on Vergil it was staggering. And then it spoke, through lips softly held and scarcely moving. “Kiss me, brother.”

Dante shoved him back against the brick.

His body followed, pinning Vergil to the wall as he crushed their mouths together. He felt Vergil’s arms fly up at once, wrapping around him; welcoming his violence, embracing it in the most literal way. His brother’s lips were already parted for him, open as his arms. Their tongues clashed and slid sidelong within the breathless lock of their mouths, crossing like swords before finding a reciprocal rhythm. He reveled in the slick, muscular thrust; the undulating caress of Vergil’s lips and tongue against his own.

_Jesus Fuck is this how it feels, how it’s supposed to feel—_

Now fully off-leash, Dante threw himself bodily into the kiss, his naked chest grinding lusciously against Vergil’s ultra-soft sweater, and the rock-hard body beneath.

_This is wrong. It’s so goddamn wrong. It has to be wrong. Nothing on earth should feel like this._

He was locked in on his brother, now, to the exclusion of all else, ravenous at his taste, savoring the clear, pure sweetness of Vergil’s mouth, slipping his thumb in beside his tongue, deftly prizing those plush lips ever so slightly wider so Dante could devour him that much more; twist and tease and penetrate the way he wanted to. 

A beat later his hands shot down, diving under the hem of Vergil’s expensive sweater, shoving it up his hard, cut stomach, past his pecs and toward his spread shoulders, driven by a hungry, all-consuming impulse to see beneath the maddening shroud of costly gauze, to throw all modesty aside and reveal his brother’s body.

Wreck it, Dante’s worser angels whispered. _Tear it in half. He won’t care._

The kiss broke abruptly, by breathless necessity, as Dante insisted and Vergil assisted by raising his arms, gamely allowing himself to be stripped. Dante fought the sweater up over his head and it fell away, forgotten in the next moment.

He only looked like alabaster. Beneath, he was heaving and real, lustfully alive.

“Fuck,” whispered Dante, and went back for more.

He dove forward, grasping the back of Vergil’s neck in both hands, catching his mouth at an obscene angle, resuming their unwholesome onslaught. Vergil’s hands curled around his biceps, locking in the gesture as he suckled Dante’s tongue with sensual abandon, a low moan escaping him, raising the hairs on Dante’s body.

This time the kiss broke under its own weight.

“Amazing.” It was softly sounded, almost not enough to disturb the loaded silence. Vergil pulled back to search his eyes, and Dante returned his stare, at a loss for anything but raw, unmitigated want. He could feel the charged air in the scant space between them, the palpable current between their naked torsos. “I still can’t believe you’re real.” The words came on a breath’s edge, chased by a quiet, incredulous laugh. His hands found Dante’s face, eyes roaming his features in disbelief. “I’ve missed you so much, brother. Even when I forgot you ever existed.”

He didn’t understand how Vergil’s eyes could be so warm and cool at the same time.

And Vergil pulled him into a hug, drew him close; letting his arms enfold Dante, holding him, their bodies pressed flush at last, warm and taut and solid and real, chest to chest, skin against skin. He found himself suddenly disarmed, staggered by this unknown intimacy. Dante let his breath go silently when he realized that Vergil was rocking him ever so slightly as they embraced.

Through the windows, he could hear the white hiss of water, of endless silver needles relentlessly drumming on the rooftops outside.

“When did it start raining?” Dante said, swallowing, closing his eyes. 

“The heavens broke down and wept when I kissed you,” Vergil murmured. “The first time. Didn’t you hear the thunder?”

“I didn’t hear anything.” He’d felt the earth move, and the heavens shake, all right—but he’d attributed those to the seismic response of his own body.

“Incredible. I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.”

He didn’t know if his brother was joking. He didn’t seem to be, and it was certainly storming now. The antique glass in the giant windows rattled with each strike, but it seemed almost blasé—a cursory acknowledgement, the obligatory yawn of a storied monolith who had survived all this and more in the course of its history.

As if on cue, lightning lit the world. Over Vergil’s shoulder, Dante saw it flash and branch through the grey-purple horizon, reaching long fingers over the skyline, where it lingered and faded. It was followed by a cataclysmic rumble.

“Heaven approves,” whispered Vergil. 

Shuddering, Dante let his mouth part in a passive kiss against his brother’s skin. “You sure that’s approval?”

“The seraphim are ecstatic. Heaven would see the angel avenged, and the demons driven out of the human world.”

“The angel. Our mother.”

“Yes. They want nothing more than this.” 

“Then I guess we have something in common.” 

Vergil breathed out at his words, a gratified sound of surprise. “Dante,” he said, with new urgency, and Dante had never heard anyone say his name the way Vergil did; with barely restrained, unvarnished adoration, like a perpetual revelation, like the voicing of an epiphany.

Like an angel might, and he supposed that half-figured.

Dante felt the warm, vital press of Vergil’s lips against his neck as his brother shifted, bringing his strength to bear, reversing them deftly, effortlessly, like a sword feint. It was Dante up against the brick now, the texture rough and cool against his naked back. 

Vergil fell forward, caging him, bracing one hand on the wall, the other briefly sliding up Dante’s throat to grasp him beneath the jaw with tender violence—then falling away, as Vergil kissed his neck from apple to hollow, collarbone to chest. Dante’s pulse reacted, arousal exploding like a flock of doves beneath his brother’s zealous caress. 

He cursed, head falling back as Vergil dipped lower, his mouth finding a nipple. He stroked it toyingly, sawing it gently with his teeth and rolling it with his tongue, before fastening his lips to it. Dante arched into him, groaning. “Sensitive there?” Vergil smiled. “Must be genetic.”

“Do it harder.” He’d always liked his nipples messed with—sucked, pinched, twisted, nibbled, what have you. He’d learned a lot about himself from strip club girls. It was a reliable direct line to his cock, and this time was no different. If anything, it was exponentially more intense, due to the deeply fucked-up development of who was doing it.

Vergil obliged, and Dante hissed, a sharp intake of breath at the piquant twinge of sensation it sent shooting south. He felt his brother’s pinstriped thigh edge between his own, pressing against his cock, which throbbed rudely beneath battered black denim, straining its taut confines almost to the point of pain.

Vergil was ripped, unsurprisingly—infernally, angelically; the hallmarks of his impressive physique had been clear through his clothes, and this was his twin, after all, so he had an idea what he was getting—but Dante had never felt such an affinity or appreciation for a man’s body beyond his own. His cock liked how his brother looked, liked him as far more than pure art, aching that much more acutely in the aftermath of his unveiling. 

And when Vergil sank to his knees before him, intense eyes up-cast and fixed on his own, calm, broad hands trailing down Dante’s body, that ache became a roar.

“Let me kiss you.”

Dante stared down at him, struck silent—at the image he made, the words he said, and all that they implied about the immediate future. 

He watched as Vergil unzipped his pants, this earth-shattering act marked only by the smooth, unthinking deftness with which he did all things. Dante shuddered at his sudden exposure to the air. His cock was tucked taut to one side beneath the bottom of his fly, the shaft straining at a hard, unnatural curve, thickly arched like the powerful neck of a draft horse, high in color, veins prominent.

“No underwear.” Vergil seemed both aroused and amused. “Of course.”

“It’s just an extra step.” Dante’s protest was distracted, desultory.

“We’re about to cross the Rubicon, brother.” Vergil’s voice was steady and warm, but strange, its habitual calm undermined by some subterranean frisson. “Anything we do after this can’t be undone, just lived with. If you want to stop, tell me now.”

Vergil wasn’t wrong. It was crossing a line. Or maybe more like vaulting a wall. Your tongue in your brother’s mouth was one thing—still pretty depraved, but relatively petty as crimes against nature went. Your cock in your brother’s mouth, and whatever avernal acts might come tumbling after—that was another matter.

Dante was silent. A crack of thunder sounded, and the rain redoubled. 

“You could really just stop?” he said, at last, in its wake. “After all that?”

“Yes,” whispered Vergil. “Absolutely.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Do you want me to prove it?”

“No.” He said it more quickly than he meant to.

Their eyes locked; aquamarine, luminous in the semi-darkness. Lightning flashed, bathing Vergil’s face milk-white for a beat, making him the true neoclassical statue he was. His silence lent to the effect long after the lightning had passed.

“What are you waiting for?” said Dante in a low voice, heart contorting with each beat.

“That,” Vergil said. 

He bowed his head, eyes closing as he touched his lips to the taut, aching convexity of Dante’s shaft. From that tiny kiss, an inferno unfurled—like he’d blown on an ember in a room full of tinder, igniting a flash fire. He saw the tattoo beneath his brother’s nape flare to blazing life, and felt his own respond in kind.

Dante’s stomach clenched, but he held fast, arms feigning calm at his sides as Vergil reached into his pants, fingers brushing the cropped netherhairs, curving under his balls, curling around his cock. Freeing him with rapt, studious reverence, like an archeologist lifting a priceless artifact from a straw-packed crate.

He flinched as it unbent, willfully silent, suppressing a groan at the back of his throat. His dick was harder than he could ever remember, jutting out stiff and thick before him, smooth and hot and sensitized, aggressively interested in the developing situation. His eyes were a hungry accomplice. It was his brother’s hands—competent and expressive, given to eloquent gestures—that now held him where he lived. Looking at his cock in Vergil’s grasp, Dante thought that maybe he could learn to like fine things.

Unsure what to say, he went with what he said to the strippers. “Like what you see?”

“You’re just as I thought you’d be.”

“Yeah?” Dante managed. “How’s that?”

“Perfect.” He stroked it slowly, once, from base to tip, to punctuate his statement.

“Shit, Vergil.” A shudder rolled through him.

Dante watched, caught in the moment as his brother ran the point of his tongue up the underside of his cock, balls to crown, pausing to lap the notch of the frenulum with a wanton indolence he wouldn’t have credited him with harboring behind that earnest, ingenuous façade. Dante’s throat clicked dryly, distressing his words like sandpaper. “I feel like you’ve done this before.”

“Boarding school. Once or twice.”

“And after that?”

“Now and then.”

“You’d think I’d have been the one sucking dick to survive.” He forced insolence again, as he threaded his hand into Vergil’s wintry hair, clutching it slow and hard, pleased by how sensual it felt between his fingers; sleek and thick and soft. “Never did, though. And there you were in private school, doing it for free.” 

Vergil groaned at his grip, a sultry noise that made Dante’s cock jerk visibly. “I did it because I wanted to, Dante.” A glint of an undertone shone in his voice; the subtle fin of a shark at sunset, seen sidelong in slant light while reclining on the shore. “I don’t do anything I don’t want to do.”

As he bowed his head, Dante was struck by a memory that flung up into his forebrain, startling as a bird against the window. 

It felt like a TV show he saw once, a long time ago, but he knew better now. It was real, it was him, and it was Vergil, all of five years old, outside in a courtyard of rough cobbled stone, during the waning gold-washed hours of an idyllic fall afternoon. They’d been playing, and he’d tripped and skinned his knee. He wasn’t the type of kid to cry from pain, even back then. He’d hurt himself and he was angry about it.

Vergil had stopped chasing him immediately. With no mother in sight, he had knelt down with childish solemnity and kissed the wound himself. And Dante remembered everything, now, with growing clarity, as the image refined itself in his mind; how the brisk air bit at his bare legs, how the leaves skittered across the dry frost of the stones. How the pain had blotted out beneath the unselfconscious insistence of his brother’s love. How the wound, already healing, seemed to disappear beneath his lips.

Now he watched Vergil nuzzle his prick as he gripped it, letting it stroke over his face. Slick translucence daubed each place the glans touched, traces that glinted like spider-silk, betraying the unspoken depths of Dante’s arousal. He caressed it with jaw and cheek, abutting mouth and nose and brow, letting the head slip past the threshold of his lips, his tongue gliding over it in slow, careless circles before plunging all the way down.

This time the ache didn’t blot out; it amplified. This time what disappeared beneath Vergil’s lips was no scrape, but it soothed a primal wound all the same. He felt the head of his cock hit the back of his brother’s throat and for a beat everything behind his eyes went white. Then it all clamored into cacophony.

A blizzard of thoughts took flight in his mind like a tossed-up tarot deck.

The best part about your dead mom being an angel was that you could be sure she wasn’t watching you fuck your long-lost twin brother from heaven, and that none of that shit was true anyway, at least not the way religious people thought.

There was something called Heaven and something called Limbo. He’d never really given it a thought, or a single solitary somersaulting fuck, but since meeting Vergil, it all made sense. No one went anywhere. No one became anything else. No one got a harp or a halo or horns or a pitchfork. Angels and devils were living beings, higher order than humans in the animal hierarchy, and along with every other living thing, including humans, when they died they just ceased to be.

But mostly, Vergil was sucking his cock.  
  
Dante threw his hand up, smacking the wall with the back of his knuckles, desperate for some kinetic outlet to diffuse the ruthless sensations that assaulted him with the relentless rise and fall of Vergil’s snowy head. His mouth locked open for a moment, a jagged moan escaping before was able to close it.

It spurred his brother to intensify his efforts. “Vergil.” Indecent pleasure surged to a zenith he hadn’t known existed and sudden panic hit him. “This is fucked. We have to stop.”

Vergil raised his head, looking sensually dazed, white hair lightly mussed by Dante’s hand, eyes like opals lit with the inner fire of arousal. “You don’t like it,” he murmured, through flushed, lust-stung lips.

“Yeah, I like it. That’s the fucking problem.”

True to his word, he ceased; acquiesced. Dante’s cock throbbed in the lapse, slick and abruptly neglected, over-taut and aching unbearably, as he gazed down at his brother, noble on his knees. He still had all the clear, cool beauty of a pristine alpine pond, but the surface was no longer untouched. Someone had thrown a rock into his depths, and the ripples were still evident.

“Vergil.” Dante swallowed, scowling, urging him forward once more. “Don’t fuckin’ listen to me.”

“Whatever you say,” Vergil breathed, and plunged back into it.

Dante groaned. Brick bit into his back as the wall took his weight, legs staggered indolently outward, receiving like it was his birthright. Vergil’s broad hands braced his thighs as he rhythmically surged, swallowing Dante whole, engulfing his cock in slick heat and undulating pressure. 

Thunder crashed, clattering the windows; armored angels rattling sabers in triumph somewhere above.

His hands rode the motions of Vergil’s head, sweeping the pale hair back from his brow now and then, holding it away from his face, so he could gaze down on the artful distortion of his brother’s immaculate features with parted lips and lowered, lust-blown eyes, before restlessly driving in to grasp the strands once more.

Dante could feel the flex of his tongue and throat as Vergil worked him over, constricting, rippling, dragging him through ecstasy toward an inevitable end. Jaw clenched, his back arched off the brick, hips now thrusting in counterpoint. If this went on much longer, he knew, he there would be a point of no return.

“About your fucking Rubicon—” he gasped, “I’m about to shoot down your throat, brother.”

“That’s the point.” Vergil was rough, breathless; exhilarated. “_Brother_.”

The way he said the word was all it took.

Grasping the back of Vergil’s head in both hands, Dante threw back his own as a wordless curse ripped out of him, loins seizing, wreathed in a black vortex of sensation. He bucked, frenzied, thrusting through the maelstrom, spilling thick liquid heat into his brother’s mouth in copious bolts, each overlapping the last.

Vergil took his violent outburst in stride, groaning, his appreciation aggressively empathetic, leaning forward to suck the life out of him, or at least the life-giving part—to draw it all into himself. Dante could feel the motions of his throat, the gentle, fervent embrace as he swallowed, again and again, and it sent ladders of chills wracking through him.

The tension in his body reached an apex before it broke, and he collapsed back against the wall, biting his lip and weathering the aftershocks. The roughness of the brick felt almost caressing now, in the full-body glow of the postlude. 

He felt Vergil release him by inches to the warm, quiet air; felt him fall forward, pressing his lips to the soft skin at the junction of hip and thigh. Felt him shudder and come to rest with his brow against Dante’s body.

The thunder was distant now, a soft mumble that Dante was only vaguely aware of. He chased his breath, chest heaving, loins pulsating. Fingers working gently in his brother’s lustrous hair. “You call that a kiss?”

Vergil laughed quietly. “There was plenty of tongue.”

In the next beat, Dante dragged him up and kissed him, ferociously— mashing his mouth against Vergil’s, tongue forcing his lips apart at once. Lashing over his brother’s teeth, laving every cavern and crevice, seeking every last unswallowed vestige of his own seed. But he was unsure where his own taste ended and Vergil began.

“I don’t like the idea of you doing that to anyone else.” He pulled back just far enough to stare into Vergil’s eyes, his own bright and burning.

Vergil looked quietly elated. “Of course you don’t,” he breathed, reassuring, cupping Dante’s neck and pressing cool brow to fevered temple. “Of course you don’t. And I never will again.”

Dante managed to nod against his skin, haltingly, without words.

“That was magnificent,” whispered Vergil. “You’re magnificent.”

“You ain’t seen nothing yet.” Dante’s valiant attempt at reclaiming insouciance was undermined by breathless euphoria.

“Really,” Vergil murmured. “How’s your refractory period?”

“My what?”

“How soon can you go again?”

Dante shrugged. “Whenever you want it.”

Vergil laughed. “And it never once occurred to you that you might not be human.”

Dante snorted. “It’s been suggested by a few girls.”

“The strippers.” Vergil seemed amused. “They weren’t ready for you, were they, brother?”

“That’s why I needed two.” Dante shrugged again. “Sometimes more.”

“Fascinating.”

“I guess.” His eyes roamed Vergil blatantly, indolently stirring embers, stoking a slowly re-smoldering hunger, emboldened in the aftermath of orgasm. “Don’t think I’ll need that tonight, though.”

Vergil smiled. “Are you sure? I can call out.”

“For pizza?”

“For reinforcements.”

“I’m good.” Dante could feel the tattoo pulse warmly between his shoulder blades, restoring his vigor. His cock pulsed, too, steeping in the aftermath of overdrive. It was still half-hard. He gave it an absent stroke as he stuffed it carelessly back down his pants, leaving his fly open. “Besides, you said you wanted more one-on-one time.”

“I did say that.” At some point during the exchange, Vergil had slipped his surly bonds, putting a gradual, respectable distance between them, and now he broke away entirely, wandering toward the windows once more. 

Dante watched from where he lounged against the wall, frowning slowly, rolling over onto one shoulder to face him. He hesitated. “Why are you all the way over there? You having second thoughts or something?”

“Not at all.” The tattoo on Vergil’s back was softly glowing, he saw, radiating warm blue light like a lone neon sign high above a long, quiet, elegant alley; angles and architecture starkly rendered in chiaroscuro, a beacon betraying the sordid sentiments that seethed beneath the calm, polished exterior. Dante realized his brother was powerfully aroused. “I just thought I’d give you space. Not everyone likes to be close…after the fact.”

“After they come, you mean?” The words were provocatively blunt.

“That’s right.” Vergil avoided his eyes, gaze tracing the starlessness above the skyline.

Dante eyed him harder. “Yeah, I’m not one of them.”

Vergil turned to look at him in mild surprise. “Noted,” he said, softly.

Dante pushed himself off the wall and approached, rolling his shoulders, feeling boneless as a prizefighter after a bout, after a knockout and rubdown, luxuriating in the sensual aura that pervaded him, inside and out. “Kinda owe you one, don’t I.”

“You don’t owe me anything, Dante.”

Behind his brother, across the room on the opposite wall, a large unframed portrait was propped on the mantel of an ornate antique fireplace, linen canvas edges frayed and beige in places. Its placement was carelessly artful; carefully haphazard.

It was of a woman with pale blonde, marcelled waves, wearing a black velvet slip gown and mink stole in high 1930s style. She faced the artist, and the onlooker, head on. While realistic, the faint influence of art deco could be noted in the face and hands; they were pale as pearl and painted with serene rounding. Her be-ringed fingers were slight and almost child-like. It was clearly old, and bore the marks of its journey through time, to arrive here at his brother’s lofty respite on a rain-slicked night. The paint was abraded in places, and one corner had an actual tear in the canvas.

Dante checked his head at it. “Who’s in the painting?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Vergil. “I just liked it.”

“I like it too.”

“I’ll leave it to you when I die.”

“Shut up.” Dante felt a sudden twinge in the vicinity of his heart, slicing briefly through the lingering haze of rapture. “Don’t say shit like that.”

“I was joking, Dante.”

“Yeah, well, don’t.” 

Dante pressed in, stopping just short of where Vergil stood, wanting to touch his brother but not sure he had the right. Not yet feeling the impunity, even after he’d come for him; watched his brother consume his very essence, witnessed that intimate alchemy; the epitome of unconditional acceptance. Even though Vergil touched him as if it was the most natural act in existence, second only to living and breathing.

He wanted to come up behind Vergil. Wanted to touch the tattoo he knew was sensitive, erogenous, especially while pulsatile; trace it with his fingers as his brother’s back arched beneath his hand and whisper that he’d never felt anything like the feelings Vergil unearthed in him, that no one had ever handled him with care, that he didn’t care if it was wrong, that he’d been on the wrong side of the tracks his whole life.

He wanted to say that _owed_ wasn’t the right word, after all, but he didn’t know another way to say it yet. Because he’d never needed another way to say it.

Instead, he traced the lambent figure with his eyes, wondering how to cross the chasm. “Blue fire burns the hottest, right.”

“In a literal sense, yes.”

“Literal.” Dante scoffed, softly. “Is that all?”

Vergil’s breath left him silently; Dante could see the minute shift of his parted lips, sense the fall of his chest. “No,” he said. “That’s not all.”

“What do you want me to do to you?”

“Whatever you want.” Vergil closed his eyes. “And nothing you don’t.”

“You know what I want?” Dante stared at him, unwavering. “I want to see your cock.”

It wasn’t like he’d never talked dirty before. He did more than his share, and he’d been known to get pretty filthy about it. It wasn’t like he’d never said the word ‘cock’. He name-checked his own with fair regularity—_suck my, you like my, take my_—but the word felt dark and decadent now, a foreign obscenity on his tongue when invoked about someone else. 

Especially Vergil, who now turned to study him fully, at the leisure of his slight remove, rain shadows flickering on his face and torso, eyes luminous in the slant light from the moon outside.

Dante claimed a little more of the space between them.

“You saw mine. Now you have to show me yours.” Dante’s eyes lingered on his strapping chest for a moment, then raked down over the rise of his immaculately tailored pants. “That’s just fair.”

“I’ll show you anything you want to see, brother. I have no secrets from you.”

“Then show me. Let’s see what you’re working with.”

“Gladly.” Vergil reached for his waist without particular haste, idly unbuckling his slim belt with slight, languid motions. He let the halves fall aside, then sought the top button. His fingers broke it open, pushing it back through the hole and parting the sides to find the tab, slowly unzipping them as he held Dante’s gaze.

“You’re being kind of a tease.”

“Why the hurry? You already know what it looks like.”

“Looks like mine, huh? Can’t argue with that. Never gotten a complaint.” 

Dante drew closer, forgetting his previous reticence, his body thrumming with impatience, anticipation killing him by inches. Somehow, he could coolly watch the girls from Devil’s Dalliance take it off all day long and never twitch a finger, but with his own brother he could barely endure thirty-seconds of low-key disrobing.

His pants now unzipped, the band of Vergil’s dark blue boxer briefs was visible, riding low on his flat stomach. 

“Underwear,” said Dante. “Of course.” He moved up on Vergil all at once, bringing them almost brow to brow, senses and tensions heightened and silent, hooking two fingers into his waistband. 

“I’m remembering something.” Vergil laughed once, fond and soft. “You could never wait at Christmas, either.”

“Why did we celebrate that fucking holiday, anyhow?” murmured Dante, distractedly, low in his throat. “All that shit’s a fuckin’ fable, and no one knew that better than good old Mom and dear old Dad.”

“Because kids love opening packages.”

“Yeah, guess what, so do adults.” He held Vergil’s eyes with his own as he yanked the waistband out, then dropped his gaze and looked straight down.

Dante stared for a long, hard moment. His next words came out in an incredulous whisper. “What the fuck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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	3. Chapter 3

THE ANGELS  
  
They all have tired mouths  
And luminous, illimitable souls;  
And a longing (as if for sin)  
Trembles at times through their dreams.  
  
They all resemble one another.  
In God's garden they are silent  
Like many, many intervals  
In His mighty melody.  
  
But when they spread their wings  
They awaken the winds  
That stir as though God  
With His far-reaching master hands  
Turned the pages of the dark book of Beginning.

\- Rilke

  
“Is something wrong?” Vergil’s tone was low and solicitous, rough-soft like suede, rubbing him wrong in all the right ways.

“God damn.” Dante’s voice came out frayed. “And I thought I had something to be proud of.”

“You do,” his brother said with artless vehemence. “Believe me.”

“I have nothing to be ashamed of,” said Dante, shaking his head. “But that thing is...you know what? I don’t even know what to say.”

“Then don’t say anything.”

“What am I even supposed to fuckin’ do with that? With you?”

“Just do what you do to your whores, Dante.” Vergil said it almost soothingly, sanding the crudeness from the words.

“Figures you’d have a PhD—”

“I don’t.”

“—but I didn’t know it stood for _pretty huge_—”  
  
“Stop.” Vergil reached out to grasp the back of his neck with both hands, leaning in to kiss him, but Dante wasn’t done.

“Did you save fifty fat kids from a burning orphanage in a past life or something? You must have been a fucking saint. Pretty sure they don’t hand those out to just anyone.”

Vergil sighed. “Look: there’s too little, and there’s enough. Beyond that, what does it matter? At a certain point, more doesn’t necessarily get you a better return. Sometimes it’s actually a curse, not a blessing. A bug, not a feature.”

“Stop with the false modesty,” Dante murmured. “You’re just making it worse.”

“Dante, trust me: your cock is enormous.”

“I know. That’s why this is so fuckin’ disturbing.”

“It’s just a dick—”

“Don’t take it so hard,” Dante finished for him, absently, still staring. “Yeah, I know.”

“That’s…not what I was going to say.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“…I don’t think that’s even how it goes.”

“Who cares. Let’s get back to the big picture. Because it’s a pretty big fucking picture, Vergil.”

“Let’s not, if it’s all the same to you.” Vergil avoided his gaze.

Dante squinted at him. “Are you embarrassed?”

“Not at all. Just a little self-conscious.”

“My brother’s _self-conscious_ because he has a massive dick. Look, I don’t know if you know this, but for most people, it’s usually the opposite. You’re coming off pretty ungrateful, buddy. This is kind of like talking about how hard it is to be pretty. People make sympathetic noises, but no one really wants to hear it.”

Vergil paused for a long moment. “I’m also taller.”

Dante stared. “I know.”

“I mean, if you want to split hairs about expression and epigenetic variance.”

“I don’t. I just want to see it.”

“Fine then.” Vergil reached down, and Dante suddenly felt his breath catch in his throat.  
  
“I’m stronger,” he ground out, on impulse, half to give his brother pause, half to goad him on.

Vergil did pause, eyeing him with a narrowing gaze, instantly embracing the erotogenic energy of this sudden sibling rivalry. “I’m smarter.”

“I’m better looking,” Dante countered at once, coarsely, stepping on his words.

“You’re right,” Vergil said in a low whisper. “At least in my opinion.”

Caught off guard, Dante glowered. _Bullshit. You’re the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me to get fucked. _

_Better yet, do it yourself. _

“So whip it out already. What’s the hold-up?”

“Take it out yourself, if you’re so impatient.” 

Vergil had settled into Ivy-League insouciance; arch, almost indolent, like an indulgent upperclassman. Big brother, pledge master. Dante fell silent, watching as he eased down the works—boxer briefs, pinstriped pants and all—strong body undulating briefly to nudge them past the jutting obstruction of his cock. He pushed them past the flared and twining muscles of his well-shaped thighs and let them fall to the wide-plank floor, stooping to retrieve them in one fell swoop as he stepped lithely aside.

“Couldn’t just leave ’em on the floor, could you?” Dante could feel the climate of his own throat, abruptly arid; hear it in the way the words came out, labored and abraded.

“They’re bespoke,” said Vergil, as if that explained everything.

“I don’t know what the fuck that means.”

“It means they were tailor-made for me.” Vergil draped them over a chair, turning back to Dante, pale gaze drifting over him, warming at the edges, weighted with intent. “Like you.”

Dante shuddered. “You gotta stop with that shit.” It made him uneasy, the way a single sentiment could steal his strength, make his whole body go weak. Words were weapons Vergil wielded all too well.

“You wanted to see,” Vergil said quietly, facing him. “What do you think?”

The high windows were wracked with rain, the room imbued with blue from the moon high above. He stood before Dante in the half-light, rain shadows running down his abdomen and loins; flickering across the breadth of his chest in drops and trickles. A crack of thunder sounded, like a gunshot ricocheting across the heavens.

Dante let his eyes trace the lines of his brother’s body, feeling primal distraction at every plane and angle, like falling out of a tree and hitting every branch on the way down. As the sum of Vergil’s form slowly filled his eyes and senses, he began to feel drunk. Everything in him pulsed and lulled, pushed and pulled, with a growing lustful intensity.

When he reached the crux of it all, the fertile river delta, the lean, carved convergence of his brother’s loins, he lingered there, rapt, almost disbelieving.

_Fuuuuuck_.

“Guess that’s what you upper-crust types call a prodigious endowment.” Dante was uncomfortably aware that the reactive, near-sullen insolence of his response was directly proportional to the erotic reverence he felt.

“That was funny.” Vergil smiled, then paused, reaching down to stroke himself. Dante watched as his tapered fingers strummed upward, caressing the coronal ridge. “You can touch it if you want.”

He did want that, with a sudden compulsion unlike anything he’d ever known, but self-awareness checked him, and apprehension held him back. In turn, he held Vergil back with words.

“You shave your balls.”

“So do you.”

“Yeah, but you ‘don’t get out much’. Work comes first. You said it yourself.”

“That’s no reason to let the topiary grow unchecked.”

“I don’t believe you just said that.”

Vergil laughed; a bright, unexpected sound. “What were you expecting? Were you ready to come forging in like Ponce de Leon, with a compass and machete?”

Dante bristled. “If I had to.”

“Well, that’s dedication. I’m flattered, brother. You’ll certainly conquer the New World with an attitude like that.”

“Yeah, well, the New World’s a little bigger than I thought it would be before I left fuckin’…”

“Spain,” supplied Vergil.  
  
"Yeah. Spain. Anyway.” He kept his eyes on his brother’s cock; watched Vergil stroke it slowly, absently, from root to tip. Vergil, for his part, only had eyes for him.  
  
_Jesus Christ. It takes half a day for his hand to get from top to bottom._

“Not cut.” It wasn’t easy to tell, hard as his brother was, the smooth skin stretched taut in every dimension, but Dante knew from looking at his own. “No surprise there, I guess.”

“Ritual mutilation is one superstitious human eccentricity our parents saw no reason to subject us to.” Vergil smiled faintly. “Unlike Christmas.”

“Don’t think it would take, anyway,” Dante said absently, letting his gaze blatantly linger.

“You’re right,” Vergil said, blinking. “I never thought about it. The healing factor would almost certainly—”

“I wanna do something to you.”

“That’s…a vague but welcome sentiment.”

“From behind, all right?” Dante rubbed his head, slowly, hanging back. “Hands and knees.”

“Something you do to your whores?” The question was as idly curious as it was provocative.

“Something my whores did to me.”

“Interesting,” said Vergil, sounding quietly intrigued. He turned toward the low bed without hesitation, and Dante saw him from behind for the first time. His eyes were immediately drawn down, from the smooth-skinned, well-formed symmetry of his shoulders and back, to the shallow dip of his sacroiliac, and the sleek, powerful hemispheres just below.His brother’s movements were fluid and unthinking as he crawled forward, taking his time, the muscles in his back and arms rippling distractingly as he obliged.

Dante followed, feeling bolder, now that he wasn’t under the pale, passionate scrutiny of Vergil’s unwavering gaze. He set a hand on the curve of his brother’s backside, feeling the skin and shape there—warm, sensual, soft; milk-white as a Grecian statue in the half-light of semi-darkness. “Nice ass,” he said, finally. “Looks like mine.”

_Unlike that other thing._

It wasn’t exactly true, and he allowed that the voice in his head was being dramatic. Vergil’s cock did look like his. Just an ever-so-slightly scaled-up model.

“It is yours,” Vergil returned, on the lee side of a breath. “At least for the moment.”

More words, leveled with casual and vicious precision, finding the target unerring. Dante felt a tug in his junk as he sank to his knees, hands first kneading, then spreading the lobes of his brother’s ass. The state of the nation was all you might hope for from a guy who wore nitrile gloves in his own house and kept up the topiary on the off-season. Vergil was immaculate; smooth and groomed, even here. Dante had expected no less.

_Nothing we do is ever wrong._

His heart thudded softly, cock twinging. He told himself this was the pinnacle of depravity. Yet somehow it felt less twisted than the unflinching intimacy Vergil so openly offered him, that he was only just able to endure.

Obscenity was something he could do. Wild, nihilist, mindless excess. That was just punk rock. One-upmanship. And if there was one thing he’d excelled at throughout his survivalist life, it was throwing himself headlong into fucked-up situations; acting before he thought too hard about it.

In the next beat, Dante dove in and let him have it, slick and rough, without finesse. The clandestine flesh was flushed and healthy, lush beneath his tongue; from taut flat to frilled crepe. He lingered over the coy, gathered indentation, tongue toying in circles. It gave softly beneath the gentle insistence of its press, muscle yielding to muscle, as he ravenously laved this hindmost locus.

Whatever Vergil had been waiting for, it clearly wasn’t that. His back arched all at once, like a strung bow, startled and responsive. “My God—”

“No, just your brother,” Dante managed breathlessly. 

“What are you—” Vergil’s words broke off in a low groan. 

Dante broke off too, putting a hand on his back. “Relax. Don’t make it weird. It feels good. I promise.”

“Don’t make it weird?” Vergil was also breathless, incredulous. “A little late for that, don’t you think?”

Dante snorted. “Let me guess: they don’t eat ass at Harvard?”

“Yale.”  
  
“Fine. Yale.”

“No. Must be a Harvard thing.”

“That’s an Ivy League joke, isn’t it.”

“So what.”

“Funny.”

“Then why aren’t you laughing?”

“I don’t want to wake up the fucking dragon between your legs.” Dante surged back into the act, lapping the furrow, rose-beige and delicate as baroque ruching, limning the ring with the point of his tongue before plunging inside.

“Fuck,” gasped Vergil, beneath him. He’d fallen onto his forearm, brow pressed against it, the shapely columns of his thighs spread and strong, his ass offered up to Dante, pedestaled like a sacrifice.

He pitched and bucked beneath Dante’s tongue, instinctively fucking back against it as it furiously lashed and stroked and probed, twisting inward; as Dante gripped his hips and buried his face there, pressing inward in a lustful frenzy.

_You asked for this. Is this what you wanted? How do you like me now?_

On a mindless impulse, he reached underneath—to grasp his brother where he lived, hearing Vergil’s soft groan as his fingers cupped the heavy satchel, feeling its warm weight, its vellum softness. Feeling the testes, rolling them gently in his fingers. He’d touched his own this way; never another’s.

It felt decadent, and he was pretty sure didn’t hate it.

Dante pulled up short, dragging his lips and cheek against the satin curve of Vergil’s ass, running a hand over his flank with lustful absence before throwing his body forward, over and along his brother’s, caging it. They chased their breath jaggedly, in rhythmic conflict. Vergil spoke first.

“You’re filthy.”

“You like it.”

“I love it.”

“Flip over,” Dante gasped out, roughly, demanding—heart pounding, loins pulsing.

“Say please,” was Vergil’s mild retort, but he did it, with affable grace and frank sensuality, turning on the bed and shifting back onto his elbows.

And there it was: the fucking beast itself, the proverbial python. Stiff enough to brush his brother’s navel, hovering parallel to his stomach. Dante sized it up warily, eyes anchoring there immediately. It cut an impressive figure against the muscled backdrop of his abdomen, broad and flushed, flaring outward slightly through the mid-shaft and ending in a glans as elegant and sculptural as a centurion’s helmet.

Outside the rain picked up, a billion falling knives, a rough, grey sound that suddenly surged out of the background and into Dante’s awareness, swelling into a chorus, surrounding them.

“I think an introduction’s in order,” breathed Vergil. “Don’t you?” The words fell much more softly than the rain.

“What?” Dante’s eyes rose reluctantly at that, breaking away from where they’d been fixed. Before he could say more, Vergil reached down and grasped his cock, shifting, bringing it flush against his own.

“Fuck.” Dante convulsed sharply, once and well, caught between realization and sensation—at being held full-mast against his brother in such an obscene press, upright in an indecent waltz. A beat later he shuddered as Vergil slowly stroked them both, together, from base to tip, his hand deftly rounding their paired heads in a lingering caress before plunging back down their twinned shafts.

Vergil was watching his hand intently, almost raptly, studying its hasteless explorations. “You see? It’s hardly bigger at all.”

Dante suppressed another shudder. “You’re crazy. You’ve got an inch and a half on me, easy.”

“That’s nothing.”

“Doesn’t feel like nothing.”

“You’re right,” intoned Vergil. “It feels like everything.”  
  
Dante bit his lip and didn’t reply. His body’s roiling response was eloquent enough.

He watched Vergil’s stomach tighten as his brother leaned up to catch his face in his hand. “You were right to want this, Dante,” he murmured. “Your instincts were right.”

“Nothing we do is ever wrong, right?” muttered Dante.

“Yes.”

“Beautiful and reasonable?”

_“Yes.”_

“Perfect?”

“Perfect,” Vergil whispered, exhilarated. “So do it.”

Dante stared, his mind going white. “What?”

“It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Shotgun? Top bunk? You called it.” Vergil smiled, breathless and feverish, eyes bright with lust. “_If it gets to that, I’m on top._ That’s what you said, brother. You don’t do half-measures, remember? You didn’t stutter, and I don’t think I misheard you.”

“Yeah, but—”

“So be on top, Dante.”

A bolt of thunder rattled the factory windows as lightning lit the glass, large panes flashing like a wall of screens stirring from sleep.

_Heaven approves._

“I don’t know if this is how it should go.”

“You called not-it. Shotgun infinity.”

“Maybe not infinity.” Dante grimaced, averting his gaze.

Vergil steered it back. “What’s the matter? You want this too. The proof’s right here in my hand.” He gave their cocks a slow, viciously luxuriant squeeze and Dante cursed under his breath.

“I just…are you sure? Sure this is really what you want?” He hesitated. “The way you want it?”  
  
“I want you.” Vergil was both intense in his need and serene in his certainty, imbuing the words with a raw sincerity. “I want it all. I want this consummation. _Our_ consummation, Dante. How it happens is irrelevant.”

Dante stared down at him. “How the fuck can you just—” he demanded, finally, almost accusingly, breaking off in frustration.

“What?” 

“Just…trust me like this.” Dante felt his face contort.

Vergil looked softly incredulous at the question. 

“Because you’re my brother.” He said it ingenuously, like an elemental truth. “And I adore you.”

The sentiment was too much to swallow whole, too tart and succulent to take without flinching. Dante closed his eyes against the sweet-and-sour twinge that shot through every place he guarded; head and heart and loins. 

“Do it.” Vergil was gentle, but inexorable.

“Fine, okay, just…we need something. Let me get something to—”

“I don’t need anything but you.”

“I can’t go in dry.”

“We’re not human, Dante. We don’t need much.”

“I know, okay? Fuck, look, obviously I get that. I just—” 

“Spit in your hand _and do it, Dante_,” Vergil said, abruptly, the words scarred by urgency, sharp as a slap. He’d never heard an edge like that in his brother’s voice before.

“Shit, Vergil—” 

When Dante hesitated, Vergil seized his hand and spat in his palm, holding him in the stillness of that piercing gaze before thrusting his own hand back at him. “Now you.”

Dante complied, keeping his eyes locked to Vergil’s as he did. He felt Vergil’s hand over his, guiding it down to his own cock, reinforcing his grip, gliding their saliva sparingly over its length.

“There you go,” whispered Vergil. “That’s all you need.”

There was something erotic about it, like blood brotherhood; the consecration of their mingled fluids, an ad-hoc ritual born on a carnal whim in the heat of the moment.

Wasn’t there something about that? Spitting in your palm before a handshake? His thoughts were chaotic, dazed by chemistry, and that one spun out of the hurricane briefly and into the forefront of his mind for a moment before it was snatched and whirled away, back into the maelstrom.

Looking down at Vergil’s taut, hungry body before him, the calm, longing ferocity of his pale gaze and sensually parted lips, chest rising and falling with desirous anticipation, the first words that came to Dante’s mind were spoken more for himself than his brother. 

“Don’t worry, I fuck like a porn star.”

“Oh, I’m counting on it.”

Vergil jerked him forward, even as he lunged into the act, instinct taking over, the way it did in a fight. He reached down to guide himself, feeling Vergil’s thighs wantonly spread for him, easing over his as his own eased beneath, dimly aware of how natural this unnatural act was; of his brother’s flawless reciprocity.He stroked the head of his cock up and down the rift, once, twice, seeking by carnal Braille, finding the aperture, the rarified place where the flesh changed and became forbidden.

Vergil’s gaze never wavered from his face. Eye contact during the act was something Dante knew he couldn’t handle, so he surged forward and kissed his brother hard as he entered him, forcing those cool, pale eyes to close in passionate reflex, feeling Vergil’s rough, startled groan against his lips and tongue as he drove his cock home, right up to the hilt.

Dante’s own groan followed, involuntary, at finding himself fully sheathed; embraced in the muscular clutch and dark heat of his brother’s body as it pulsed around him. It was surreal, and overwhelming, and he steeped in the deep obscenity of it all. They kissed for a moment longer, open-mouthed and unrestrained, until their mouths broke apart.

Their chests heaved against each other for a beat, breath rasping softly past cloven lips.

“That’s it,” intoned Vergil, quietly. “It’s done.”

“What do you mean? We’re just starting.”

“Yes. Of course.”

Dante could feel his heart stir to a rumble like kettledrums as Vergil’s hands stroked over his back, silently urging, reassuring, and he started to move. He heard a catch, the smallest intake of breath from his brother, and he felt a distant qualm he couldn’t trace to a conscious thought or point of origin, so he shook it off and kept going.

The first three or four strokes were priming, almost like practice swings. On the fourth he heard Vergil exhale, followed by a low moan. Dante savored the sound, eyes locked on his brother’s lips, easing into the act with a gradual and growing intensity.

It took nothing to ignite the bonfire between them; the first thrust a struck match, a spark in dry air.

“Bespoke,” Vergil said, the word itself a near-physical caress, and Dante flinched at the extra shiver that shot through him. “What did I tell you?”

_You’re a lot of things, brother, but you’re not wrong._

Nothing in his life had prepared him for this feeling. It was brutal; beautiful and breath-stealing, but he couldn’t think about that now. Instead, he put his head down and eased into rippling motion, falling back on instinct, setting a rhythm, forging the act link by link.

“Amazing.” Vergil’s quiet, rapt exhalation bore no trace of hyperbole. He observed, as always, impassioned and engaged, but something else was in his eyes; a merciless softness Dante both craved and feared to be close to. 

_Just you wait._

Among his inarguable gifts, Dante knew he fucked like a machine; steady and consistent, whatever the pace, an irresistible force to which anyone’s body would eventually succumb. 

It would be no different with Vergil. 

Or so he told himself as he pumped and strove, determined to reach the pristine beach of his brother’s fine-grained and distant shore, to throw himself bodily on those warm, strange sands, crawling relentlessly onward, invading, claiming Vergil’s sensory territory until it shattered his composure and he ceded his self-control to Dante’s defining chaos.

He envisioned a silent struggle of erotic wills; a war of attrition. But his brother offered no hesitation, no resistance—only rhapsodic physical agreement. He was counter-responsive to Dante’s steady onslaught, cradling his riding form, moving his strong body sinuously as he received him. Like he wanted this. Welcomed it, even.

“So civilized,” murmured Vergil, near the shell of his ear, on the crest of a breath, stroking his hand through Dante’s hair. “Chivalrous, even.”

“So what?” Dante felt his hackles raise, defensive, uncertain.

“I’m just surprised, brother. You like it rough, don’t you? Isn’t that what you said?”

“Oh, you wanna _fuck_?” Dante spat out. “We’ll fuck.”

He drew back up onto his knees once more, grasping the backs of Vergil’s thighs beneath the crook, driving into him with long, full strokes in a snapping cadence, the room resounding with driving rain against glass and the brusque clap of their flesh colliding.

“You like that?” he managed to pant, his voice coarse with arousal.

It was crude but erotic, stud-like and showy, and he knew he looked good this way, upright and on display, every muscle in his lightly tanned body working and flexing in the act of exertion, in the service of his purpose.

“You’re spectacular.” Vergil grabbed the back of his neck and dragged him down for another rough, snatched crush of a kiss, lingering before letting him go.

In spite of himself, Dante didn’t really want to be let go.

He fell forward over his brother, braced on his hands and working, sweat beading on his brow, loins stroking steady and deep. Bottoming out with each thrust, moving his hips in a slow circle to punctuate it.

“I still can’t believe you’re really here,” intoned Vergil, breathless, running his hands up Dante’s corded arms and over his taut shoulders, down his flexing, undulating back, that strange elation in his eyes again, intensifying his unearthly beauty.

Dante kept his mind focused, letting the words wash over him like ambient noise.

“That you’re inside me.”

Dante felt a violent pulse and clenched his teeth. “Do that, and I’m done for.”  
  
“So what.” Vergil’s gaze was heated. Hazed and hedonist. “Come for me.”

Dante leaned forward, roughly clamping a hand over his mouth. “You first.” Arousal flared, surprising him, but he mastered himself, swallowing, stilling everything, fighting it all back down to a vicious simmer. “I wanna see that monster shoot. All over you.”

Vergil groaned against his palm. Above it his pale eyes were fixed, alive; almost incandescent beneath their chevroned brows. It was enough to make Dante shudder.

“Fuck,” he bit out, ripping his hand away and rubbing it over his mohawk as he reared up once more, leaning back and closing his eyes, slowing to a deep grind, narrowing all his concentration on the task at hand.

“I want to try something,” Vergil said suddenly, with the intense, ravenous curiosity that lived and seethed just under his placid, polished surface. “I’ve only done it to myself, while…”

“While what?” muttered Dante, distracted.

“Jacking off,” Vergil said, calmly laconic, and the words had no right to sound so frankly civilized.

_Or so weirdly hot, out of nowhere, from a guy like that. _

Dante grimaced. “Fuck. Christ, Vergil—you want me to choke you or something? That’s not really my thing, but whatever you need, I guess.”

Vergil laughed, followed by a hissed intake of breath. “Not that.”

“Then what?”

“Put your hand on my heart.”

“Yeah, sure.” Dante complied, mid-thrust, steeling himself. He slid a hand up his brother’s chest, cupping the solid ledge of Vergil’s pectoral, the pulse steady beneath the muscle, beating seductively up into his bare palm. A strange, stray twinge shot through his pounding cock that he did his best to ignore.

“Can you feel it? Can you feel me?”

“Yeah,” murmured Dante, torpid; almost dazed. Vergil’s pulse quietly drummed in his blood, humming in his flesh, resonating in his bones, hypnotic and intoxicating, lulling and stimulating.

“Reach inside me,” Vergil whispered. 

“I’m already inside you.” Dante’s voice was a low, lust-weighted gutturalism and came with a grinding physical reminder. 

Vergil groaned. “Then do it twice. Use your power, Dante.”

Dante hesitated, but eventually willed forth the force. It surged all at once, pouring from his palm into Vergil’s softly heaving chest, disappearing beneath the lucid skin, leaving only a tell-tale glow around his hand. He hadn’t fully mastered his newly-burgeoned Nephilim abilities yet, so he knew it must be clumsy—artless and inexpert, all too abrupt, but Vergil seemed pleased enough to exhale, his arousal made audible as the lambent power suffused him, surrounding the shape of his beating heart.

“God yes, that’s good,” said Vergil. “Now pull. Just a little. Just enough…to give it an edge.” Vergil made a low, wanton noise, closing his eyes. “That’s it. Shift it.” He sighed, appreciatively. “Now my heart is in your hand.”

Dante shuddered.

“That’s how much I trust you.” 

He stared as Vergil arched sensually into his touch, chest conforming to his palm, eyes closing as he gave himself over to sensation, reveling in it. “God yes, brother. Touch me where I live.”

Instinctively, viscerally, Dante understood the appeal—a precarious eroticism, a sensual vulnerability not unlike having your balls fondled, cupped and tugged and gently twisted, but with exponentially more intensity; a far greater magnitude. A dark risk; perversion worthy of a demigod.

“How’s it feel?” Watching Vergil, Dante’s curiosity stirred along with his ardor. With his lips parted and his head tipped back, he looked like one of those lusciously-suffering saints in old paintings whose supposed agony seemed suspiciously like ecstasy.

“Incredible.”

“Show me,” he ground out, hungry and demanding, eyes locked to his brother’s face, his pale, half-slatted gaze.

Vergil opened his eyes, hedonic and softly hazed. “Of course,” he whispered. His hand slid slowly up from Dante’s hip, over the clenching muscles of his stomach and onto the solid precipice of his left breast. Dante flinched without meaning to, half in expectation, half in apprehension. “I’ll be gentle,” Vergil assured him, at once, on the raw edge of a breath.

Vergil’s power was honed like his blade, and equally deadly and precise in his hand; his execution surgical, but not clinical. There was art in his actions, always, even in the grip of merciless passion.

Dante gasped as it entered him, hot blue, invisible tendrils unfurling, curling forth like baroque ribbons, wending gently around the contours of his heart, holding, cosseting, stroking, suspending; all with exquisite tenderness.

He froze, stunned into stasis, his living, beating existence cradled in his brother’s quiet, considerable power, as if Vergil himself caressed it.

With their hands on each other’s hearts, Dante could feel a bolt from within, a sudden rush of something unknown; a whole subterranean ocean, threatening to overwhelm him. A bolus dose of opium. The last hit; a hotshot. A glimpse of many-splendored heaven.

_When you know you’re done for, but you don’t even care._

“Now I’m holding your heart, and you’re holding mine. They’re tethered. Connected. Bound. Like our bodies and souls. Like we were in the womb.” Vergil breathed out. “How does it feel?”

Dante let his head fall back with a groan. Any words he might have wanted to form tumbled away into oblivion, like pieces of a crumbling façade.

It felt celestial, infernal; inevitable.

“Fuck me, brother.”

His loins surged to life at Vergil’s urging, the hushed, ruthless beauty of the words catalyzing him like the strike of a whip.

He could hardly hear the storm over their pulses, as they roared in his ears, battering the cages of their chests like birds, like beasts; angels in chains.

“My God, Dante, you don’t know what you do to me.”

“I’ll do to you.”

_“Yes.”_

Claps of thunder intensified above. Lightning lit the windows blind all around them and Dante knew, somehow, that the building had been struck from above, that this physical collision had called down heaven, whether in condemnation or benediction, but that didn’t matter. 

Nothing mattered but this, battering his brother with everything he had, watching Vergil’s back arch and his breath hitch, holding his heart and hearing him gasp and feeling him seismically writhe, his powerful body conspiring with Dante’s own to bring down paradise and drag up purgatory to witness this consummation, this blasphemous act of ultimate fraternity.

_You first._

Vergil’s eyes went white as his hair, which bloomed upward from his brow like it was underwater, sparks and wisps of brimstone and mist swirling around him like newly-minted bronze, wreathing his shoulders and chest. 

_Fuck. _

Dante lost what was left of his breath, and nearly lost control. He’d never seen his brother trigger before, and he found it staggering. The shift was effortless, more of a sea-change than a seizure, wholly foreign to what he felt each time he was wracked by his own, jerked upward and suspended by internal forces, subjected to metamorphosis in mid-air.

He threw his head back with a frustrated yell, denying his eyes the sight, fighting down the final surge of arousal, clawing back from the brink of climax. 

“I’m there, Dante.” Vergil’s voice was augmented; subtly altered by the alchemy of the transformation, resonant and sonorous, but the unvarnished warmth it held for him was unchanged. “Take me out.”

_Take me with you._

“Always.”

_What?_ He was hardly able to parse what it meant, that Vergil had heard him; he didn’t know if it was some artifact of their strange anchoring or if he’d mindlessly said it out loud, somehow, without intending to.

But then it meant nothing; everything ceased to matter as Vergil’s heartbeat suddenly quickened under Dante’s hand, pumping wild, wild as his glowing gaze, and he started to gasp, light-flooded eyes somehow more than alive in their vast fields of almondine white, exquisitely expressive in spite of being blank and undefined. Dante took it all in, rapt, with rhythmic thrusts; the vision of his brother in the throes of demon hedonism, lit from the inside, the sudden show of hellish striations in his snowy skin like faint veins in rare Carrera, like ancient crazing in priceless china.

Lower, against the marble-carved relief of his torso, his cock looked like art; like some fiendish fertility totem sculpted from infernal ivory, but Dante had to admit he’d never seen a classical statue sporting Vergil’s dimensional charms. He felt a sudden feral urge to grab it, jack it, help it along, but he hesitated and in the next beat Vergil had seized it himself, reaching down with his free hand, yanking it upward in rough, deft, purposeful strokes, his brusque, fevered rhythm at contrapuntal odds with Dante’s thrusts.

A beat later Vergil shuddered and arched, body clenching around Dante as a series of low, gasping, guttural sounds tore from his lips. Pulses of lightning flashed, firing like neurons in the dark dome of the sky.

“Fuck yes.” Dante felt ravenous, delirious. The words shot from his lips in a vicious hush. “That’s right.”

As he watched, Vergil’s cock erupted over his pumping fist, ropes of seed pearl jerking out in arrhythmic splendor, white plumes arching like a fountain, striking the underside of his jaw, dousing his neck, shooting up his chest in hot jets, strafing the linen above him. A stray pulse struck Dante, spattering the hand still fiercely pressed to his brother’s rampaging heart. He groaned.  
  
And all at once, he understood what _tethered_ meant.

He triggered in more ways than one—he felt white heat shoot through him in a barbarous rush, felt it blast behind his eyes and blaze through his limbs, red-tinged, lit from within, throwing his head back as a fierce cry ripped from his throat. And he came like a freight train, hand gripping Vergil’s hip as white heat bolted deep inside his brother’s still-spasming body, over and over.

As Vergil’s climax ebbed, something else surged—Dante sensed it more instinctively than consciously—a raw force of nature rising in his brother. It hit him in a shockwave of warm neon blue, all-encompassing; engulfing him in its embrace, as the counter tide dragged him under, rolled him over, then bore him up and buoyed him on reverent and gentle crests, surrounding him on all sides.

What he felt was nothing more or less than love. All he’d been denied, all he’d forgotten; all he’d never known. 

Everything, all at once: the hotshot, the bolus dose of opium. A whole subterranean ocean, threatening to overwhelm him. The last hit, and it wasn’t what he thought it would be. It suffused him, he succumbed to it. It brushed his lids closed and it sent him into darkness.

_When you’re done for and you don’t even care. _

*** * ***

He was aware of his cheek pressed against a solid dune of warm, fragrant masculine skin, eyelashes stirring, impeded; lips parting, head lifting as consciousness reclaimed him.

“Welcome back,” whispered Vergil, in a low voice. His broad palm stroked slowly up and down Dante’s naked back, soothing, mantric, like a man gently chafing life back into the drowned.

“Fuck.” Dante blinked, disoriented. “How long was I out?”

“Not long. A few seconds, max. If it makes you feel any better, I swooned too.” Vergil paused. “That was…phenomenal.”

_You have a brother, and you fucked that brother._

Dante’s eyes drifted upward, fuck-drunk and languid. Vergil was back to his normal state, gaze softly solicitous in aquamarine, skin a light warm amber beneath his sleek, pale crown. Luminous, but no longer lit from within by an unearthly glow. No fissures, no wisps of dark mist shrouding him, but the memory of it lingered vividly. 

_You and your brother are abominations, an insult to heaven and a threat to hell._

Vergil seemed almost dreamy, drifting, basking in the aftermath. After a moment he inclined his head and pressed a kiss to Dante’s forehead, imprecise and full of absent tenderness. Dante closed his eyes.

“Everything all right?” Vergil murmured. “Not passing out again, are you?”

“Naw, nothing like that, just…you know.”

“I know.” He said it like he really did.

It was hard to be guarded, naked and spent in sensual torpor, lying full-length against his brother, thighs interlaced and loins pulsing damply; collapsed against his chest amid a ruin of white linen. When it came to Vergil’s intimate proximity, he had no natural defenses. All Dante’s resistance faltered; all his doubts seemed to short-circuit at such close range. They tried to stir, they struggled to push up off the floor and resist, insolent and defiant, in reflexive opposition to any vulnerability. They hissed that this was unnatural, not because of any human taboo, but because such things, if they existed, weren’t for him. They whispered how treacherous this was, that he shouldn’t allow himself to indulge. 

But then Vergil’s lips touched his brow and blew it all away like a silenced gun.

_You and your brother are an abomination._

_And you’ve never had it so good._

He groaned, turning his face into Vergil’s armpit on a carnal whim. His brother’s scent was gathered here, genteel male animal, postcoitally dark and sated. The hair there was a lush puff of rough mink, downy and soft against his lips and nose. Below, his fingers blindly sought and found the matching thatch beneath the suggestive chevron of the iliac furrow, rougher and less coy about its purpose. He plucked at it in small, slow, insolent strokes, stopping just shy of that freakish behemoth his brother called a dick.

“Find something you like?” Vergil’s voice was amused; indulgent.

“Carpet matches the drapes. I wondered.”

“I’m platinum, Dante. Not peroxide.”

It was true. Vergil had been winter-white ever since his first memory, since they were little kids. Maybe he’d even been born that way. Dante didn’t know, and there was no one to ask.

Dante snorted. “Yeah, well, you didn’t exactly have pubes last time I saw you.”

“Ah,” Vergil admitted, chuckling, with philosophic irony. “That’s true.”

A moment passed, the space filled by rain—a distant murmur on rooftops far removed from warm linen, not an immediate threat on thin sheet metal.

Vergil was gazing down, studying something. “Speaking of which, it seems our little tryst left you with a souvenir.”

“What kind of souvenir?”

“A white streak.”

“No shit?”

“Mmm.” Vergil’s hand found its way into his mohawk, threading, idly caressing. “They’ve been up showing more and more lately on the back and sides. Like feathers,” he murmured. “But now you have one in front, too.”

“In front, huh? That’s pretty punk-rock.”

Vergil toyed with the disparate strands. “It looks good on you.”

“Yeah?” Dante gave him a lazy smile. “You think it’ll go all the way?”

Vergil studied it as he stroked it through his fingers. Each time he did, it sent a sensual tingle through Dante’s scalp; not exactly sexual, but something more pure, if equally primal. It was soothing to lie here, warm in the aftermath, tangled and damp, being touched with such unaffected intimacy. Like grooming, or preening, or something _National Geographic_ like that.

It wasn’t something he was used to.

He never told anyone to get out, but the girls never stayed long, either, after the act, almost like they expected it and had the professional courtesy to preempt the whole awkward exchange. What man in his right mind wouldn’t want them to get scarce once the deed was done, wouldn’t want his space back once his needs were met, wouldn’t want to wake up alone?

“Probably,” Vergil decided, at last. “Then we’ll look even more alike. Would you be all right with that?”

Dante shrugged, eyes closed, feeling the faint smile on his lips like sunshine on a warm day. “I’d still have better hair.”

Vergil chuckled. “Should I cut mine like yours?”

“No,” Dante said, quickly. “I don’t need you biting my style. Besides…” He paused, and shrugged again. “Yours works for you. That whole…swept-back preppy thing. You wouldn’t look right without it.”

Even as he said it, the memory of Vergil’s demonized form reemerged in his mind, wreathed in dark mist; the blue-tinged glow behind his eyes, the jagged, upswept crown of white. There’d been nothing fucking preppy about that, had there, and it had worked for him just fine.

“Good to know. That it works for me, I mean.”

“Yeah, you pull it off.” Dante tilted his head, studiously avoiding Vergil’s gaze. “You think white’ll work for me?”

“Absolutely. We are twins, after all.”

“Will it look as good, though?”

“It’ll be amazing. Till then, for now…I like the streaks. Especially the one you got tonight.” He paused, his voice gaining a low, whetted edge that made Dante’s whole body respond like a plucked string. “Because I’ll always know it’s the one I left on you.”

“Yeah, well, you left a few other white streaks too.” Dante ran a hand indolently down his chest, feeling the lingering evidence of their misdeeds, Vergil’s semen cooling on his skin, the silken secondhand vestiges slick and strangely pleasing to the touch. “If we’re splitting hairs.”

Vergil’s lips parted. “You’re right, that’s bad manners on my part.” He reached down to grab the edge of the duvet. “Here, let me—”

“No,” Dante said, rolling back and guarding his torso. “Fuck you. Get your own.”

Vergil laughed, glancing at his own chest. “Believe me, I’ve got plenty.”

Something strong and brotherly stirred, some memory from deep in the forgotten leaves of long-ago autumns that lined his soul, an impish impulse toward horseplay. 

Dante lunged over him all at once, serpentine, caging him, dipping low on his hands over Vergil’s body and running the point of his tongue from his brother’s navel to his collarbone, through the slick remnants of his seed, savoring both the bittersweetness and the indecency. “Licked it. Now yours is mine too.”

Vergil smiled slowly in the wake of his antics; eyeing him with a weighted gaze. “How is it?”

“Pretty good,” said Dante. “Not that I have anything to compare it to.”

“Not even your own?”

Dante huffed a shrug. “You got me there.”

“Let me guess: mine tastes like yours, and you’ve never had any complaints.”

“Nah. Yours is different.” Dante paused. “Better.” He licked his lip a little with the tip of his tongue and eyed Vergil. “You want a taste?”

Wordlessly, Vergil reached for the back of his neck, even as Dante leaned in, melting heavily against his solid body as they kissed, slowly, with no haste but mounting intensity, egging each other on; sibling rivalry, competitive depravity.

Dante broke off and pulled back, just enough to hold Vergil’s gaze in a provocative lock, before breaking into a slow, insinuating grin. “Obviously I’m the better kisser, but you’re not half bad.”

“I could get used to your smile.”

Dante squinted at him. “I smile.”

“You do, but it’s not usually aimed at me.”

“Fuck.” Dante shook his head, falling to the side. “You make me sound like a real asshole, you know that?”

Vergil was silent for a beat, then his lips parted. “Can I tell you something, Dante?”

“Yeah. Sure.” He paused. “Of course.”

“When I was looking for you, I used to lie here—right here—every night, and imagine what it would be like, to find you. To reunite at last. How I would throw my arms around you, when we finally came face to face. What it would feel like, to hug my long-lost brother. To look into his eyes again.”

“But you didn’t do that.” Vaguely, Dante wondered what would have happened if Vergil had. He cringed inwardly imagining his own response in the moment. _Back up with your bad touch, pal. That’s an area my bathing suit covers. They taught me about Stranger Danger._

“No.” Vergil laughed softly. “Our reunion didn’t quite play out in the misty, cinematic way I pictured, but then, when does anything? In the moment, that didn’t matter. It was incredible. And I don’t blame you at all for being skeptical—of me, of my intentions. It’s why I had to show you.”

Dante swallowed, sawing his jaw. “It was a lot to process.” _Still is, since you keep showing me more._

“I know.” Vergil’s nod was knowing, and a trifle rueful. “Still, when I thought of embracing you again, after all these years, I thought I had a good idea how it would feel. And I was elated at the prospect. But my God, Dante—nothing prepared me for the reality. I couldn’t have possibly imagined the magnitude.”

“Yeah, well, gotta tell you, Verge, I don’t think you could ever have imagined this, unless you were thinking some pretty dirty little fucked-up thoughts.” _Like I was._ Dante cleared his throat; swiping a finger under his nose, averting his eyes.

“I wasn’t,” Vergil said, and paused. “Not until I saw you.”

Dante stared. “What does that mean?” he asked, over a throat that was suddenly dry.

Vergil frowned. “In the abstract it was all very brotherly. In the flesh it was…different.”

“Different.”

“What did you call it again?” Vergil tilted his head in fake contemplation “Ah yes: ‘Hot’.”

“So you felt it too.” Dante shook his head, disbelieving. “You fucking asshole. When I told you, when I fessed up and I was all freaked out, why didn’t you say something? Why’d you let me think I was the only one?”

“I didn’t want you to feel obligated to follow through. I didn’t want to pressure you, or influence you in any way. If your attraction was organic, and real, then it would persist, regardless. If it wasn’t, if it was a misfire of some kind, or the reality didn’t match the fantasy, then I didn’t want you to act out of duress.” Vergil steepled his fingers on his lower stomach and gazed at the ceiling; he cut a handsome profile, and it intrigued Dante, who rarely got to see his own. “I wanted you more than anything, Dante, but not if you weren’t wholly willing.”

“Did I seem unwilling?”

“No,” said Vergil, softly. “Apprehensive, maybe. Trepidatious. But that’s not unwilling. You can be afraid of something and still want it.”

Dante felt his brow contort as he averted his eyes. Vergil was hitting closer to home than he knew.

“—And that’s to be expected. We’re _species nova_, as I said, but this was still terra incognito. Anyone would have qualms, misgivings, in the face of something so…unorthodox. Anomalous.”

“You didn’t.”

“No. I didn’t.” Vergil paused. “I don’t.”

Dante gazed at him, slack-jawed, incredulous. “Why?”

“Because I’ve been waiting for you my whole life, without even knowing it. And when I saw you, I knew. Everything made sense, Dante. It was all for you, everything I’ve been driven to do.” He reached out and steadied Dante’s jaw, looking straight into his eyes. “For us.”

Mercifully, he didn’t hold the contact long. In the next moment he’d wrapped his arms around Dante, clasping the back of his head and pulling him close. Rocking him slightly, again, like it was an unthinking instinct. Dante breathed out, his body going boneless, against his every armament and anxiety.

When Vergil’s embrace eased, he let himself stay where he was, lounging half on his side, half over his brother’s.

“What we just did. That thing with the…” He moved his palm in slow circles over Vergil’s chest with tentative agency, raising his eyes, feeling his brow knit and his lips part hesitantly as the question formed behind them. “Was that what Mundus did to our mother? When he tore her heart out?” 

Vergil seemed surprised. “Well…yes, I suppose. Ultimately. But the poison’s not in the act, it’s in the dose. It’s a matter of degrees. It’s about whether you’re being playful…or not.” 

“Playful.”

Vergil smiled slowly. “Of course. Take our sword fights as children. We got a little rough and tumble, but we didn’t kill each other. It was all a game.” He breathed out, pressing a sensuous kiss to Dante’s shorn, sweat-damp temple as he whispered, “Our games are just different now.”

The words prompted an erotic chill, but it also gave Dante a chill of another kind; a sense of foreboding he couldn’t quite justify. “I dunno. Feels a little dangerous. Like it could get out of hand.”

“But it would never go that far, Dante.” Vergil said it with infinite surety, earnest conviction. “I could never hurt you.”

“I believe you,” Dante said quietly, after a spell. He was surprised to realize he actually did.

“Good.”

“And the game’s pretty much the same, isn’t it? Still a sword fight.”

Vergil chuckled. “Touché.”

Thunder crashed, somewhere beyond the city. The echoes lingered, rumbling luxuriantly.

Dante sighed and rolled over onto his back beside Vergil, stretching a little. Making himself at home. He was mindful of not straying far; they lay arm to arm and thigh to thigh. “I gotta hand it to you. You really took it out of me.”

“I’ll put it back into you, if you want.”

His head turned slowly on the pillow, as he met Vergil’s waiting gaze. It was calm; summer blue and inviting as a lake on a perfect day in May, though he knew the water was deep beneath. “Yeah?” Dante hesitated, eyeing him warily, heart beating a little faster. “And what would that look like, exactly?”

Before he could get an answer, there was a sudden tentative knocking from below, echoing through the hollow industrial grandeur of the loft; a more immediate and localized sound than the mellow thunder rolling over, well outside the rattling glass. 

Dante had never liked random visitors. The uninvited were almost always bad news. He’d made his feelings known with some classic signage, sawing off the top half of the aphorism so it just said, “Don’t come a knockin.’” But despite the thin walls and general permeability of the trailer, a knock felt somehow even more intrusive here, in Vergil’s inviolable fortress, this strange warm sanctuary high above the dirty, demon-infested world.

Vergil sighed. “Shit. It’s Kat.”

“How do you know?”

“It has to be. No one else has access to this floor, and if anyone else got access, believe me, they wouldn’t knock first.”

“Don’t answer it.”

“I have to. It’s protocol. If I don’t, she’ll assume something happened to me, and act accordingly. By which I mean, bypass the code and come in.”

Dante shook his head, inexorable. “So send her a text.”

“A text could come from anyone in possession of my phone. She won’t believe it. And she shouldn’t. This is good. It’s what I ask of her.”

“Fine. Then let me handle it.”

Vergil was stirring beside him, much to his dissatisfaction. “It’s nothing. It’ll just take a moment, Dante.”

“No.” Dante put a hand on his chest, staying him; Vergil’s heartbeat called to mind erotic echoes of the recent past and made his loins throb. “You stay right where you are. I’ll be back.” He pushed up from the bed.

“Dante—”

“I’ll handle it,” said Dante, and started down the stairs.

“What? Like that?” Vergil said, incredulous.

“It’s how I answer the door at home. She didn’t mention it?”

“You don’t have a home. This is your home.”

“My point exactly.” He raised his voice to say it, as he was already on the lower level and crossing the floor toward the door. Above, he heard Vergil swear.


	4. Chapter 4

Complexities, treacheries  
We watch through glass  
We see nothing  
Latex on my fingertips  
We touch through glass  
We feel nothing  
All we've carried, all we've owned  
Scattered like stones  
_Show me, show me_  
All the mess, all the wrong turns  
We could take these stones, we could build something  
We could try forever  
To try and see  
And survive alone  
You show me everything   
You show me everything I can't afford…

\- Tindersticks, _Show Me Everything_

  
“Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other. ”   
― Rainer Maria Rilke

  
As he neared the door the knocking came again, less tentative this time, louder and with growing insistence.

“Keep your shirt on,” Dante muttered as he reached the threshold. “I’m coming.”

He had no idea if he could even be heard through the weathered steel fire door—an industrial antique if there ever was one. _They don’t make them like this anymore_, Vergil had told him the first night, running a nitrile-gloved hand over it in leisurely appreciation, and Dante couldn’t believe he was actually jealous of a door.

For a guy who traded on sleek tech and software, Vergil’s personal security system relied on plenty of retrograde manual hardware. The metal edge of his brother’s front door was studded with analog locks of every possible description—chain, slide bar, deadbolt, rinse, repeat. _Sorta punk rock, like multiple piercings_, thought Dante as he flipped them open, one by one, in a cascading series of sounds, turning the massive wheel with both hands as he flung the door open.

Kat stood solitary in the vast, dim hallway, waifish in her hot pants and hoodie under the flickering light of a single bulb. Her face was freshly scrubbed; without the heavy rings of eyeliner her features were average, and she looked much younger. Dante had guessed her for early-to-mid twenties at first, but now he wondered if she was closer to eighteen or nineteen.

“Hey,” he said, and leaned against the reinforced jamb, squinting. “What’s going on?”

“Dante,” she said, sounding surprised. He didn’t know why; she knew he was bunking with his brother.

“That’s the name they gave me. Everything all right?”

Beneath her hood her eyes flicked down to his body, just for a split second, then shot back up to his face like she’d touched a hot pan. “Something happened, just now.”

“Did it?” He gave her a quizzical look, blinking and pretending to fight off a yawn as he feigned an earnest attempt to wake up and pay attention.

She stared. “You didn’t feel it?”

“Huh uh.” He stepped aside, wordlessly inviting her in, rolling his shoulders. “What was it?”

“I don’t know how to describe it.” She stepped over the threshold and into the apartment, folding her thin arms across her chest in a self-soothing embrace. “It came out of nowhere, this surge of something, a power like I’d never felt before. It was like...a nuclear blast.”

“Weird,” said Dante.

“Is Vergil all right?” She sounded anxious. Her eyes scanned the room, as if seeking him by force of habit.

“Yeah, he’s fine. He’s—” Dante glanced up, gesturing vaguely.

Vergil came to the railing at the edge of the loft wearing a patterned midnight-blue silk bathrobe, tying the tasseled sash and looking down. “Kat. Is something wrong?” He looked sensually disheveled, deconstructed and aglow with a soft hedonism. He didn’t really look like he’d been sleeping, but Dante knew it was the more reasonable conclusion to draw.

“Vergil.” Several expressions crossed her face, as Dante watched: surprise at being suddenly hailed from above, admiration for the picture his brother presented, fascination at this departure from his day-to-day appearance, dawning dismay at having disturbed him. “I…I don’t know. I just felt a massive surge of power, out of nowhere, and I didn’t recognize it. I was just telling Dante.”

Dante crossed his arms, contrapposto, and stood there, nakedly.

Vergil frowned. “Interesting. I didn’t feel anything.”

“Really?” She looked doubly taken aback. “I was sure you guys must have. It felt like it shook the whole building.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but we've all been working really hard lately…are you sure you weren’t dreaming?”

“No, Vergil, I was wide awake. I promise you, I swear it. I was just hanging out, poking at Tor, downloading a movie and listening to music when…when it hit me.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe you didn’t feel a thing.”

“It’s been a quiet evening here,” said Vergil. “Right, Dante?”

“Yeah,” said Dante. “Boring as fuck.”

Kat fell silent for a moment, hesitation written on her face. Finally she took a breath. “Vergil…there was…something else about the power I felt. Something…different. Something about the way it made me react.” She glanced at Dante apologetically, shaking her head. “Believe me, I wouldn’t be telling you this if I didn’t think it might be important. It’s kind of embarrassing.”

“What is it?” Vergil was doing a masterful job of keeping his expression schooled, thought Dante; equal parts solicitous care and solemn concern.

Kat bit her lip. “It was…an erotic response. To the power. I was just sitting there, and suddenly I was…”

Vergil urged her on, politely, with a nod.

“Verg—” began Dante, uneasily, seeing the color creep up in her cheeks.

“Wet,” she said bluntly, averting her eyes. “Like…really, really wet.”

“Wet,” echoed Vergil, frowning, then it seemed to sink in. “Oh, right. I see. Interesting.”

“Then it got…worse. Or…better. I really don’t know how to call it. I had an orgasm, out of nowhere. Then another. Multiple. I couldn’t stop, Vergil. It was almost like a seizure. I managed to stagger to my kit and cast a spell of warding to shield myself…eventually…and that stopped it.”

“That’s very strange,” said Vergil.

Dante shot him a look.

“When I…um, recovered”—she flushed and averted her eyes as she said it—“I ran right up. I thought someone might have found out who you are and cast a love charm, to control you or seduce you—maybe Lilith, or who someone else who wants to see us destroyed. Or that maybe they sent a succubus.” She gazed at him, artlessly adoring. “This seemed like really powerful magic. Something that could be devastating if it got hold of…” Kat trailed off, searching Vergil’s face for insight, or an explanation. “You,” she finished, softly.

Dante sighed and raised his arm. “I had a dirty dream.”

Kat and Vergil turned to look at him, in tandem.

He rubbed his hand over his head, tousling his mohawk. “Yeah, it was pretty…X-rated, actually. There was a blonde and a redhead, and two brunettes. Twins, if you can believe it. I guess some people are into that. Anyway, if something set you off, it was probably me. I’m really sorry. I swear on my life, I didn’t know I was doing it.”

“Were you both asleep?” Kat cringed, in sudden self-awareness, like she’d committed a capital crime by coming there.

Dante shrugged affirmatively. “I was. Dunno about him.”

“Yes,” said Vergil, belatedly. Somewhat unconvincingly. “I must have dozed off while I was reading.”

“Hey, we really don’t know that much about Nephilim, do we?” Said Dante, suddenly, drawing her attention back to him. “I mean apart from what you guys dug up. It’s kind of a wild card, right? So there’s no telling what kinds of weird shit we might be causing, without even meaning to. All I know is that I was showing all those girls a _really_ good time.”

“Nephilim dreams, no doubt.” Vergil’s voice was smooth and almost too casual. “Sorry to cause a disruption.”

“Your subconsciouses unleashed.” Kat nodded, slowly but readily. “Of course. It makes sense. The two of you together must be…a powerhouse. Something to see.”

Vergil smiled. “You have no idea.”

“Will the warding be enough?” asked Dante abruptly, grasping the back of his neck, making a show of contrition. “I don’t want it to happen again, but I don’t know how to control what I dream about. Yet, at least.”

“Oh, yes,” Kat said, quickly, tucking her hair behind her ear and half-hiding in her hood, trying not to look at his body. “I’ve got it handled. Spell of protection. You don’t need to worry about me. I just didn’t know what it was. I’d never felt anything…like it.”

“Kat,” said Vergil, after a pause, from above. “Since you’re here: did you want to stay for…sashimi?”

She looked surprised at the invitation. “Oh, you guys haven’t eaten yet? I…I mean, no, I don’t want to intrude.”

“Are you sure? It could be very…filling.” He paused, fingering the sash of his robe slightly, loosening it, only to slowly re-tie it. “Doubly so, even.”

She hesitated, lips open, gaze locked on his face, like he’d short-circuited her.

“Get her a shot of rye, Dante.”

“She said no, Verge.” Dante broke in abruptly, before she could reconsider. “Let her go.”

“Of course,” said Vergil, at once. “You’re right, Dante. We could all use some sleep.”

“Yeah, I’ll…go.” Kat hooked a thumb over her shoulder, toward the door. “I’m sorry for bothering you guys so late.”

“It’s not a problem,” said Vergil. “I appreciate your diligence, Kat.”

She took a few steps back, nodding. “Goodnight.” It took her a moment to turn, to take her eyes off Vergil, but when she did, it seemed to galvanize her, and she hustled the rest of the way out, disappearing into the elevator at the end of the hall, rolling the cage closed with a clatter.

Dante shut the heavy door behind her, cranking the wheel and re-engaging the locks; holding his tongue until the industrial lift began its cacophonous trek down, and he could be sure she was out of earshot.

“The fuck was that?” He demanded, as soon as it was gone, rounding on his brother.

“What?” Vergil’s expression was mild as he came down the open stairs, pulling on a fresh pair of latex gloves.

“Sashimi? Really?”

“Why not? There’s plenty.”

“That’s not what you meant. ‘It could be very filling?’ That was an invitation to get screwed. By both of us. That was the upshot, right?”

“Why not?” Vergil shrugged. “It’s called the devil’s three-way, isn’t it?”

“Why? Why would you—?” Dante faltered, oddly incensed but at a loss for the right words to explain his outrage, either to his brother or himself. He cast about for a moment, wanting to throw something, but not sure why.

“Why are you clutching your pearls all of a sudden? You’ve had a ménage-a-trois, I know that much. Kat told me—”

“So what? That doesn’t mean I fucking want one now.” His words carried an unintended edge that cut through the moment, leaving raw, wounded silence in its wake. The next ones were accusatory. “What happened to one-on-one time?”

Vergil stared, stopping just short of where he stood. “I’m sorry, brother.” He said it genuinely, after a moment; an earnest apology. “It was just a whim, an idea that occurred to me on the spur of the moment. I thought it would be more to your liking, given your preferences. I don’t know what else to say. I thought you might…like it.”

_My preferences? Thanks to you, asshole, I don’t even know what my preferences are anymore._

“Right now, I prefer things just the way they are.”

“I’m sorry,” said Vergil again, more softly. “I didn’t realize—”

“Wait a minute. Back up. You wanted her to stay just because you thought _I’d_ be into it?”

“I said what I meant, Dante. I need you to have everything you want.”

“No. _No_. That’s _not_ what you said. You said, ‘I want you to have everything you need.’”

Vergil looked at him. “What’s the difference?”

“I don’t know, but there is one.”

“Not for me.”

Dante was thrown for a moment, not sure how to respond. “I never asked for…that, with her.”

“You never _ask_ for anything.”

“Neither do you,” Dante countered.

“That’s not true,” Vergil said, quietly. “I asked you to join me. I asked you to stay.”

Dante was silent.

“I’ve asked a lot of you.” Vergil shook his head. “That’s why I want to give you everything.”

“I don’t need everything.” Dante’s eyes sought his brother’s face. His gaze held there, insolent and smoldering, but beneath was a vulnerability he knew he wasn’t hiding. “I just need…” He felt something fragile at the core of himself crumble and the walls shot up to protect it. “Forget it. Whatever this is, just leave her out of it, okay?”

“All right.” For once, Vergil didn’t press for clarification. He seemed oddly chastened, his expression hesitant.

“Great.” Even though Vergil had acquiesced, Dante still felt he’d lost somehow. Lost something, anyway—if only a chance.

“Well. Let’s pick up where we left off, shall we?” Vergil said, turning and strolling back to the open kitchen. “I’ll finish making dinner. I bet you’re starving. I know I am.” He opened the fridge and retrieved the board with the half-cut blocks of sashimi, the cold bowls of rice.

_That’s not where we left off._ The words died in committee, without making it to his lips.

Dante followed after a beat, pulling out one of the bar stools—_a Bertoia_, he thought, hearing the echo of Vergil’s rapt voice, _an absolute modern classic_—and taking a seat across the butcher block kitchen island, gazing at him obliquely, uncertain what to say, or how to bring things back to where he’d left them when he’d gone to answer the door.

_Why couldn’t you just stay in bed? I said I’d handle it._

“Are the gloves really necessary?” Dante couldn’t help a little smirk of derision.

“Force of habit,” his brother said, looking down at them with a mild smile. He sounded vaguely apologetic. “I have the element of anonymity in my favor so far, and I’d like to keep it that way as long as possible.” 

Vergil picked up the knife he’d been using earlier. It was a piece of art; one of those katana-steel ones, where the metal was folded over and over itself for strength, the ornate swirls of the process evident in the blade. That seemed very on-brand for his brother. 

He wiped it off with mindful care, testing the edge with his gloved finger, apparently finding it satisfactory, though Dante had no idea how he could tell, physically removed as he was. Force of habit, maybe. After a moment his lips parted. “Why did you bother to lie to her?”

Dante snorted. “What were you planning on telling her?”

“Nothing. Let her draw whatever conclusion she wants. I’m not explaining myself. Not to her, not to anyone. It’s frankly none of her business.”

“What the fuck—I mean, it kind of is, though. She’s loyal to you, and your cause, she’s a good…employee. Friend. Whatever.” He wasn’t sure exactly what to call Kat, when it came down it. “She deserves consideration. Compassion. Even if it comes in the form of a lie.”

“What does compassion have to do with it?” His brother seemed genuinely bemused.

Dante eyed him, disbelieving. Was it possible Vergil had no idea how she looked at him?

“You keep asking me questions about her.” Vergil said it like a sudden revelation, face sobering, something unreadable entering his eyes. He paused, averting them. “Is it because you have feelings for her?”

Dante stared. “No,” he said. “For fuck’s sake. I have feelings _about_ her. I like her. She’s a nice girl, and she’s been through a lot. You of all people should know that, given what you…did for her. I don’t want her to get hurt.” He shook his head, slowly. “Besides, she’s human. She wouldn’t understand, Vergil. It’s better this way.” 

“Wouldn’t understand what?”

“This. Tonight.” Dante paused. “Us.”

“Us?” said Vergil quietly. “Is there an us, Dante?”

Dante shook his head, incredulous. “You really have to ask?”

“I don’t take anything for granted.” Vergil’s voice was low, serious. “I know there’s a you and I. But an us…that’s another matter. And I don’t want to presume more than you intend.”

Dante stared, nearly bristling. “I said what I said.”

Nodding, Vergil turned his back. He opened the fridge again and pulled out some Pellegrino. Gazing at Dante’s face, he unscrewed it calmly and took a slow sip, straight from the bottle. Dante felt a weird, appreciative twinge at the surreal sight of his brother, negligent and bare-chested in his opulent silk robe, swigging from a champagne-sized bottle of mineral water like a college kid drinking milk from the carton.

“You gonna say something?” Dante said finally.

“What would you like me to say?”

“Shit, Vergil. What could I possibly want to hear? Maybe that you—I don’t know—agree?”

“You really have to ask?” With a faint smile, Vergil handed his own words back to him, clean and neatly folded.

Dante swallowed. “I guess I do.”

“I thought I made it pretty explicit when I told you I’d waited my entire life for you. That everything I’ve ever done was for us. _Us_, Dante. Not you and I.”

“Yeah,” Dante said slowly. “I guess you did say that.”

“And if words alone aren’t enough, I think my body spoke fairly eloquently.”

“You did seem pretty into it.”

“You seemed like you knew your way around. Hard to believe you’d never done that before.”

“I said I wasn’t into guys. Didn’t say I’d never fucked one.” Dante eyed him narrowly. Maybe a little defensively. “Cash is king. So long as I’m on top, that’s just a transaction. Paid masturbation.”

Vergil stared at him for a long, silent beat, seemingly taken aback, and Dante felt the chill of a sudden qualm, wondering if somehow, after everything, he’d managed to alienate his brother’s seemingly unconditional affections. Or at least given him pause; cause to reconsider having plucked him from the rubble.

His heart began to falter and list, threatening to sink as the moment dragged on. His newly disarmed defenses stirred, dismayed but ever-ready to re-engage.

“So how much is this going to set me back?” Vergil said, at last, straight-faced, taking a gulp of Pellegrino.

Relief washed over Dante, though he kept cavalier. “Family’s always on the house, right?”

“I hope not _all_ family.”

Dante sobered, falling quiet. “You’re the only family I have.”

Vergil searched his gaze. “You’re the only family I need.”

“Why you gotta one-up me?”

“Pretty sure you just one-upped me. Literally.”

Dante just shook his head. “Give me that.” 

Wordlessly, Vergil held out the bottle and he swiped it, taking a long swallow. “Wow. This tastes vaguely adjacent to an orange.”

Vergil huffed out a short, fond sound. “You’re a handful.”

“A handful?” Dante snorted. “We get it: you have the bigger dick. Give it a rest.”

“I am.” Vergil pointed over his shoulder vaguely, where the incandescent blue tattoo could barely be seen through his silk-clad back. But Dante noticed something strange; the tattoo wasn’t pulsing—recharging the way Dante’s did after he fought or fucked. Instead it was blazing in high relief, bright and even.

“What the fuck?” he murmured. “You’re not even down.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your…battery. Power, your energy, whatever. You’re at full strength. Not even that—you’re overcharged.”

“You know what? I think you’re right.” Vergil reached back to touch it curiously. “Figures. I feel incredible.”

“It didn’t drain you…doing what we did. It fucking _charged_ you. What the hell.” Dante could feel his own tattoo’s steady pulse between his shoulder blades, his vigor slowly being restored. “Meanwhile I’m down to zero.”

“But you weren’t receiving,” Vergil said, suddenly.

Dante’s brow creased. “So you mean, it was…like a transfer?”

“I mean, I don’t know, but it kind of makes sense.” Vergil wore that rapt, ruminative look of his. “The ancient Greeks believed a man who was penetrated by another man would absorb that man’s masculinity. Obviously, that’s a myth, and we’re not human, but perhaps the conceit isn’t so irrelevant after all. Whereas in congress with a human that energy would normally just be lost to the ether, another Nephilim might be primed to receive it. And clearly, I did. You were the donor, I was the beneficiary.”

“So, wait…we can charge each other up?” Dante leaned over the counter. “Like…say, between battles? Between missions? Like if my gauge was empty and I needed a boost, you could—”

“Fuck you?” said Vergil, quietly, deliberately. 

Dante felt his heart stutter. “Hypothetically,” he retorted sharply.

“Hypothetically, of course. Yes, hypothetically I could fuck you right into next Tuesday. Perhaps up against a graffitied wall. Pound you senseless until you left your own mark on the art, and then send you off to kill demons. Hypothetically.”

Dante stared, lost for words.

“How’s that Pellegrino treating you?”

Feigning nonchalance, Dante took another hit off the bottle. “It’s pretty good, once you get past the disappointment.” He paused after he said it, looking at Vergil expectantly, and then a little pointedly.

“What?” said Vergil, eventually, good-naturedly, as he layered sashimi.

“I left myself wide open on that one. All you had to say was ‘kind of like you.’ Or ‘you should talk.’ Or like, ‘That reminds me of someone.’ ‘Sounds familiar’. Plenty of ways you could go.”

“That would be a lie,” reflected Vergil, wryly, reasonably. “Not a joke.” As he spoke, he held out a piece of something, proffered on the end of the knife; fish, lush flesh, soft and striated pink.

“What’s the difference?” Dante scoffed, reaching for it.

Vergil shrugged. “A joke only works when it either reinforces or exaggerates a known or universal truth to the point of absurdity, exposes a hypocrisy, or violates an expectation. Saying something untrue and belittling is just an insult, not a joke.”

Dante snorted. “Should have known you’d have a fucking scientific formula, even for that.”

“See, that’s funny. It exaggerates a known truth.”

“Violates an expectation,” said Dante, suddenly, pointing at him. “Then by your own formula, the joke would be funny if _you_ were the one who said it. Because it’s not like you to say shit like that. It’s unexpected.”

_Like that shit with the graffiti just now. _

Vergil smiled slowly. “Actually, you’re not wrong.”

“Which I guess is how you say ‘you’re right’?”

“You’re right,” Vergil said, with self-aware irony. The smile spread. Far from being affronted, his brother seemed ever more pleased by the exchange. He finally shook his head, amused, as he went back to slicing bright blocks of fish. “It would still be a lie, though.”

The sound of the knife was clean and pleasant against the chopping board. Its leisurely rhythm dominated the silence for a moment.

“So you liked it?” Dante set the bottle on the kitchen island, picking at the label like it required all his concentration.

“I didn’t make that clear?”

Dante shrugged. “Never hurts to elaborate.”

“It was phenomenal. More than I thought possible.”

“Best you’ve ever had?” Dante demanded, cocksure, pushing for more.

“Absolutely, undeniably, no question. That would hold true even if I had something to compare it to.”

“Wait, what?” Dante felt his brow crease. 

“What?” Vergil cast an idle glance at him.

“Are you saying you’d never done that before?”

“Never.”

“But…all that shit about guys, about not being against it? Fucking Ivy-League blowjobs? What the hell was that?”

“I mean, I’ve done mouth stuff, obviously. And the Princeton rub, of course. But when it comes to intercourse, I always seem to end up the giver rather than the recipient. I guess people tend to prefer me that way.”

“You’ve never been fucked.”

Vergil smiled. “I have now.”

“What the fuck, Vergil.” Dante glared, brimming with quiet outrage. “You should have said something.”

It cast the whole thing in a different light—the sharp way Vergil’s breath caught when he started to move, the instinctual qualm Dante felt but couldn’t define and subsequently cast aside.

“Why? What would you have done differently?” It seemed like a rhetorical question, by the breezy way his brother shrugged.

“I don’t know. Maybe nothing, maybe a lot of things.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It was perfect. Sublime, even.”

“That’s not the point, Vergil. The point is I didn’t get a choice. I didn’t have all the information.” He rubbed his head mindlessly, needing a physical act to siphon off his agitation. “Where do you get off holding back important details like that?”

“But that’s just it, Dante. I didn’t think it was an important detail.” Vergil unwrapped something yellow that was presumably food; uniform in color and formed into an unnatural rectangle. 

_Tamago_, said the label that Dante read peripherally. Whatever the fuck that was. He flattened his hand on the countertop, feeling the reassuring solidity of edge-grain wood. “And I’m telling you it was.”

“There’s nothing I can do about it now.”

“Yeah, no shit. We’ll never have that chance again.”

“I really think you’re making too much out of this—”

“I would have liked to have known, that’s all. That you’d never...that I was the first.”

Vergil shrugged. “Now you know.”

“Only in hindsight. I didn’t get to…”

“Enjoy it?” Vergil’s calm tone took a darker turn, faintly accusatory.

Dante stared. “Experience it. With you. We were both there, but you did it alone.”

Vergil stared, then broke into an earnest, incredulous smile. “Dante, it’s irrelevant. Don’t you see? I’d choose you, no hesitation, whether the first time or the five hundredth. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.”

“Maybe something like that should be a big deal, Vergil, you know? For both people, not just one. Maybe you shouldn’t get to decide for both. Maybe you shouldn’t be the only one who ever knows what’s really going on.”

“When you put it that way,” admitted Vergil, quietly, after a moment, “it’s a fair point.”

“I’ll fucking say.”

“You’re right, Dante: I should have told you. I just didn’t think it mattered. I didn’t think you’d care, one way or another.”

“Why would you think that?” Dante’s face contorted, slightly, before he forced it straight again. “I’m not some kind of—”

_Psychopath. Nihilist. Antisocial delinquent._ The case notes had been thorough, and he could see them clearly in his mind’s eye, flashing, like eidetic snapshots. “—asshole,” he finished, uncertainly.

“Of course you’re not.”

“Then why—” Dante faltered, sullenly casting about as he scowled. “I don’t fuckin’ get you, Vergil. You ask me to trust you, you want me to trust you on everything. So I do. I’m here, aren’t I? I’ve done everything you asked. And yet you can’t trust me with this?”

“I’m _earning_ that trust, Dante.”

“Yeah, sure, you are, but—”

Vergil sighed. “How to explain this? All right, look: with Kat, you’re careful, protective—almost tender.” His smile was wistful. “That’s in you, that capacity. To nurture the weak, and pity fragility. With me, it’s different. You’re guarded. Combative. Contrarian. As it should be, I guess. Sibling rivalry is what it is, especially for twins, and I know I still have a lot to prove to you. I understand why, and I don’t mind, but I’d be crazy to make myself vulnerable like that, to set up a target for you to take shots at. Dante, I’ve opened my body to you, along with my heart—but I have to guard myself, too.”

“Against me?” Dante said tersely, indignant and crestfallen. “What did you think I was going to do?”

“Not care,” Vergil said, very deliberately.

Dante’s brow creased. Vergil continued.

“If neither of us care, then there’s no incongruity. If it’s only meaningful to one of us…” He trailed off. “It’s just better not to have expectations.”

“Well, I do care. And I would have cared then, too, if you’d just fuckin’ let me.”

“It’s just, you haven’t exactly set a precedent—”

“Yeah, all right, no, I fucking get it.” Dante sawed his jaw for a moment, then finally asked. “Did it hurt?”

Vergil’s gaze softened. “No.”

Dante averted his eyes, grimacing at himself. “And I guess that’s how I say…did I hurt you?”

“Did I seem like I was suffering?”

“I know how it ended up. I was there, all right? I mean at the beginning.”

“Only for a moment.”

Dante swallowed, face crumpling. “Shit, Vergil. I told you we shouldn’t have done it like that—”

“We’re not humans, Dante. We don’t feel pain the way they do.”

“Yeah, we don’t feel pleasure the way they do, either, do we? We feel a lot more. And I just guess I’d rather you’d felt more of that, and not…anything else. Especially not from me.”

Vergil’s eyes sought his, with a sudden soft feverish intensity. “If anyone was going to hurt me, I’d want it to be you.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“You’re the only one who ever could.”

Dante moved toward him on impulse, rounding the island, banishing the barrier between them. Vergil glanced up, miscalculating his next slice, cutting his finger. Dante saw it happen, sensed the blood by scent before it even made the scene. It wasn’t like his brother to make a slip like that, not with a blade.

He seized Vergil’s gloved hand and stripped it bare, bringing it to his mouth, easing Vergil’s tapered index finger between his lips, just in time to taste the salt-bright bead of blood, holding his brother’s gaze as he slowly drew it out, fully healed.

“Not the only one,” Dante murmured. “Someone has to save you from yourself.”

After a beat, Vergil laughed, haltingly. “I won’t argue with that.”

As they stared at each other, he felt the exquisite friction between them, that deep carnal resonance, surging toward a roar. Embracing it was easier than steeping in the unvarnished intimacy of his brother’s lucid gaze, not knowing how else to respond. _That’s how we get there. Back to where we were. Back to the afterward._

“Hey, maybe we should forget dinner.”

“Again? After I went through all that trouble? I _bled_ for you, Dante.” Vergil smiled, after a moment. “You need to eat. You may not be human, but you’re still a living creature.”

“Yeah, okay.” Vergil was right. He was hungry. Ravenous, actually. But it was in two dimensions, figurative and literal, and he wasn’t sure which one to feed first. “Where do you wanna eat?”

Vergil frowned. “I feel casual. How about the couch?”

“Guess I’ve been _casual_ my whole life. Who knew?”

“Grab a beer and sit down. I’ll bring it out to you.”

“Whatever you say.” Dante lingered for a moment, snapped his fingers and hit his fist, then lit out for the leather chesterfields. 

Since he’d been crashing on the cordovan one, he chose it, and settled into its crook, leaning back against a rectangular pillow with the Red Cross motif on it. The next moment he decided it was more comfortable without it, and pulled it out from behind him. He held it in both hands, examining it for a moment, then put it over his lap, figuring he could at least cover his dick for dinner. Dante was no expert on table manners, but that seemed like baseline etiquette. He glanced over the back of the couch, watching Vergil put on his finishing touches. 

His brother turned on music—mellow, atmospheric, moody—far from the kind of aggro shit Dante listened to, but it felt strangely right for the time and place. He felt his body ease, rhythms synching to its dark, rolling sensuality.

“Perfect,” he heard Vergil murmur. He stuck a couple pairs of decorative chopsticks in, stepped back to admire his work, then picked up the deep white bowls, artfully mounded with colorful sashimi. “All right: we have ahi, two cuts of bluefin, salmon, squid, shrimp and egg. Plus _real_ wasabi, tamari, and some seaweed salad on the side. That should do it, right?” He came across the floor and handed one to Dante over the back of the couch.

Dante took the bowl, shaking his head. “I’d have been happy with tuna.”

“Oh, there is tuna. There, there, and there. That’s the ahi, maguro, and this…this is the really good one. Toro. Top grade. See how light it is? That’s because it’s absolutely marbled with fat. Trust me, you’ll taste the difference.”

“I meant from a can.”

Looking at him, Vergil smiled. “You forgot the beer.”

“Shit. Yeah, I guess I did. My mind must have been elsewhere.” 

He moved to set the bowl on the coffee table, but Vergil held up a hand. “Stay,” he said, warmly. “I’ll get it.”

He went back to the kitchen. Dante heard the refrigerator opening and closing, then the fresh, appetizing sound of caps being shucked. A moment later he was back with two bottles. He handed one to Dante and settled into the opposite corner, angling his body inward and facing him companionably. 

Dante looked down at his bowl. “So…where do I start?” 

“Do you know how to use chopsticks?” Vergil paused, as if it just occurred to him. 

“Yeah, of course. If I’m not eating pizza, I’m eating cheap street Chinese. My body’s probably 80 percent pepperoni, twenty percent MSG.”

“Can’t argue with perfection.” Vergil’s eyes drifted toward his physique obliquely.

“This is better, believe me. I’ve never had anyone cook for me before. Well, except mom and dad, back in the day. Dad made waffles. I remember that.”

“He did.” Vergil’s eyes were soft, alight with sentiment. Not for Sparda, or nostalgia, but for him. “Sourdough.”

“Yeah. They were really good.”

“Funny idea, isn’t it—our demon of a father nurturing his little refrigerator starter.”

Dante smiled in spite of himself. “They were pretty domestic, huh.”

“Yes.” Vergil smiled too, then hesitated, raising his eyes as he picked up his chopsticks. “But there’s nothing wrong with a little domesticity.”

“I dunno, Verge. Maybe if they’d stayed a little more wild, they’d still be around and none of this would have happened. Maybe it’s a mistake to let yourself get too tame.”

Vergil chuffed dubiously. “This didn’t happen because they tamed each other, Dante. Or because they settled in somewhere secluded and were…effortlessly happy together. It didn’t happen because dad kept a sourdough starter. That’s not why any of this happened.” He paused. “It happened because they ignored a present and credible threat. Because they thought they could hide from it, and pretend it didn’t exist.” His eyes gained that almost incandescent intensity. “We’re not going to do that.”

“You’re pretty when you’re indignant.”

“Fuck you,” Vergil said.

“I mean it.” Dante stared at him for a moment longer, taking in his face. “I like it when you’re all self-righteous.”

“Listen to me, Dante. It’s about being safe. If you’re wild and you don’t have that, you’re just prey. And if you’re tame, but not safe, you’re just bait.” He reached for Dante’s hand. “I swear to you, brother, we’re going to make this world safe for you and I. I swear it on my life.”

Dante felt a pang in his chest that bloomed into something distressing; a feeling too beautiful to look at except from the corner of his eye. “For us, you mean.”

“_Yes_.”

“Okay, I believe you. But I’m starving. Tell me how this goes. What do I do with the green stuff?”

“Ah. Yes. All right—pick up your wasabi and mix it into the tamari. Right there.”

“You mean the soy sauce?”

"Essentially." Vergil shrugged, and Dante knew he wasn’t quite right but he wasn’t wrong enough to bother correcting. “Then you can either dip each piece as you go, or you can do what I do, which is pour the whole thing over the top.” He demonstrated as he spoke. “Purists claim it’s anathema, but fuck it. It’s better this way.”

“Fight the power, Vergil,” said Dante, with mock solemnity, following his lead.

His brother laughed. 

They fell to eating. After the first umami-filled bite, something kicked in and Dante realized how hungry he actually was. He sampled everything in the bowl in turn, with increasing approval, before going back for another pass. “Holy shit,” he murmured. “This is amazing.”

“Thanks, but I can’t really take credit.”

“Why not? You made it.”

“I just arranged it. It is raw, after all.”

“It’s fucking incredible.” He washed down the words with a definitive hit of beer. It wasn’t the kind of beer he was used to, either—cheap punk-rock piss-water in the can, bought by the case, shotgunned in rapid alternation with Virility while listening to “Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues”. It was thick with flavor and complexity, while still being refreshing. The thought occurred to him once more. _Maybe I could learn to like nice things._

Beyond the giant factory windows the rain had shifted back to mist, sifting down gently, caressing the city, shrouding the rooftops. It swirled along to the soft snare brushes of the evocative song that played in the periphery.

Vergil glanced at him with a faint smile. “This is nice,” he ventured, after a moment.

A gentle murmur of thunder sounded, soft percussion from one side of the sky, more ambient than arresting.

_Heaven approves._

Dante leaned back. The rich leather felt oddly decadent against his naked skin. “Yeah, it is.” He shook his head, with a nodding glance toward the windows. “Must suck to be one of those poor brainwashed bastards down there.”

“We’re going to help them too, Dante.”

“Yeah? Whatever. I don’t have much use for ’em.”

“They’re not bad, Dante. Just…limited. Their scope is small, as are their minds.”

“Wow. When you put it like that, they sound really nice.”

“Humans are…they're wonderful creatures, in their way, but look what they fell for, look how weak and susceptible they were. Left to their own devices, they'll become an endangered species. Like any upper-order creatures, we must be their stewards, Dante.”

“Sure, I get that. They need protection.”

“Yes. Mostly from themselves.”

“Yeah, I lived among them, Vergil. Thought I was one of them. Maybe I’m just a cynic, but I never saw anything good in humanity, so the day you told me I wasn’t one…I wasn’t exactly broken up about it.”

“Humans are their own worst enemies. But so what, Dante? It’s the same with giant pandas.”

Dante squinted at him. “Guess that makes you a nature freak.”

“A conservationist,” whispered Vergil, seeming to beam at this revelation from his lips. “Absolutely.”

Dante fell silent. “I can’t say I get it, but if it’s important to you I want to do it. You can count on me.”

“I know. I know it, Dante.” There was something tender and rapturous in the way he said it, something that carried through to his brilliant eyes and made them more luminous than ever. Dante had never been held, or beheld, by anyone like this. In that moment he knew: there was no one else in existence who could. Only his brother could love him like this, if he could just let him.

“Thanks for making dinner,” Dante said. “That was really cool of you.”

“You’re welcome. But it’s nothing. I like doing it.” Vergil paused, with a faint smile. “Especially for you.” He shifted slightly, letting his arm drape over the back of the couch, sleek and at ease. One side of the opulent robe slipped a bit, exposing the smooth skin of his inner thigh. For a moment he reminded Dante of a young crime lord, untroubled and in his element, carelessly wrapped in midnight silk, lounging back against the tufted leather.

His body language was open in a way that seemed like an invitation, or at least an amenability. Dante felt a fierce impulse all at once, an urge to reach over and run his hand up that errant slip of skin into the no-man’s land beyond; to wake the sleeping beast beneath the heavy patterned silk.

Instead he set his empty bowl aside, killing the last of the beer. “What now?”

“Say the word.” 

There was silence for a moment, apart from the low, dulcet music; they sat at opposite ends of the couch, and though the distance was slight, it felt insurmountable to Dante. He knew it was physically possible to move toward Vergil, to do any number of things to him, to initiate any intimacy he desired, from hardcore sex to playful war to passionate affection.

He’d only gotten a taste of the latter, but it was succulent. It had left him famished, newly aware of the low, gnawing longing in his chest; a grievous primal wound he’d never known he carried. 

His mind spun scenarios, indulging the compulsions he feared to enact. He imagined crawling toward the other side of the couch, silently untying that robe, insinuating his nakedness against his brother’s and pressing close. Maybe it wouldn’t even be sexual at first. Maybe it would only be sensuous. Maybe Vergil would just wordlessly wrap his silken wings around him, encompass him and hold him for a while.

He wanted to be skin on skin with more than the chesterfield. It would be perfect, right here.

Vergil would indulge him, he knew. He only had to say the word. But he didn’t know the word. He had no idea how to broach something so loaded and exposed—how to ask Vergil to embrace him again, or to disarm his own defenses enough to allow it.

Silence hung in the loft, suspended, like the mist outside.

After a couple of drawn-out beats, Vergil shifted forward on the couch. “What say I make us a couple of drinks—”

“Vergil—” As his brother turned, and that solicitous gaze hit him, Dante lost his nerve. “Yeah. That’d be good.”

“It’s chilly out tonight.” Vergil said suddenly, avidly. “We should have a fire.”

“Those things actually work?” Dante paused, impressed. He’d seen antique fireplaces in old victorian institutions; asylums and orphanages, but they were never used. They didn’t want anything associated with warmth in those places. They sat cold and silent and distant, mouths hollow, lined by the ghosts of old ashes. He’d seen them while exploring in rundown mansions, too. Either they were blocked off, or the chimneys were occluded, and starting a fire would have meant filling the place with smoke.

“Absolutely.”

“Just never seen one that did.”

“If you take care of something, it can last a lifetime.” Vergil’s words were deceptively light.

“What’s a lifetime to us, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” Vergil admitted. “Nobody does.”

“A fire’d be nice,” said Dante, slowly. “I’ve been to some bonfires, but I haven’t seen a fire in a fireplace since we were kids.”

“There’s paper and kindling next to it. Why don’t you start one?”

“Sorry, but I don’t know how to do that, unless you want me to throw a Molotov cocktail at it. I was a city kid, not an Eagle Scout.”

Vergil nodded readily, unfazed. “I’ll do it, then.”

“But I want to learn,” said Dante, quickly, on impulse.

_Show me all the things I missed. _

_Show me everything._

Vergil smiled slowly. “Give me just a minute.”

Dante stared into the dark hearth, ashless and immaculate in its ornate white surround against the weathered wall of brick, while Vergil poured and measured and shook in his peripheral hearing. 

Eating had restored his stamina. He pulsed at half-mast, now, the gauge between his shoulder blades steadily climbing. He was already relentlessly hard beneath the pillow; he pressed down reflexively against his stubbornly stiffening cock. He heard the casual rattle of ice, and sensed the silent concentration of his brother straining his mixology into a pair of glasses, somewhere behind him.

Vergil came back a beat later, handing him a lowball glass. “I call it a Flower Sermon. Lime, thyme, cracked black pepper and gin.”

“That sounds really weird,” said Dante, reaching for it with the hand that wan’t suppressing his aching dick beneath the buffering aegis of the Red Cross. He paused. “Thanks.”

“I think you’ll like it,” said Vergil, depositing his own on the side table. He paused to open a vent on one of the factory windows before continuing on to the fireplace, where he knelt in his elegant robe, looking like some studious and well-bred head acolyte of a collegiate secret society caught mid-ritual, about to anoint some nominee into the brotherhood. “It’s sort of a golden-age pour with a modern twist.”

Dante scoffed. “What would I know about that?”

“I didn’t say you’d know about it, I said I thought you’d like it.” He shook out a section of the newspaper, separating a folded page and rolling it up.

Dante sniffed the drink. The pepper was faint, but discernible. He shrugged and took a sip. Then he took another, surprised at how well it worked. The pepper disappeared quickly off the palate, heightening the other flavors and leaving a pleasant afterimage. The image of his brother as an votary in some dark, Ivy-League subterranean fraternity, on the other hand, lingered. It wasn’t like secret societies were off-brand for him. “Tell the truth. Were you in Skull and Bones?”

“Wolf’s Head,” Vergil said absently. “I turned down S&B. I liked their aesthetic, but not their social roster—or their utter lack of social conscience.”

“They don’t want to save the world like you do.”

“I should say not. S&B is full of demons. Offspring of infernal oligarchs, all Mundus’ old-money cronies in high places.” He struck a match and lit the rolled-up paper in his hand. “They’d much rather keep things just the way they are, forever.”

Dante snorted. “Figures.”

“It does.”

“What are you doing that for?” Dante squinted, watching as Vergil held the flaming roll of newspaper up inside the chimney like a torch.

“Priming the flue,” murmured Vergil. “If you open the damper without heating the space and creating a vacuum, the cold air from outside rushes in, instead of out. When you feel a draft pulling upward, you know it’s ready. Ah, there it is. Perfect.”

“Makes sense,” said Dante, leaning forward to watch, taking another drink. He didn’t know what a damper was, but he figured Vergil would tell him. “What next.”

“You really want to know?”

“I asked, didn’t I?” His libido had taken a back seat to his curiosity for a moment, as if he was equally hungry for all the things he’d missed.

“Fair enough.” Vergil shrugged, with a mild smile. “I’ll show you the way I learned from our father. It’s a solid enough method, even though I later found out on my own that it’s not actually the best way. There’s a European method that’s been used for centuries—burns cleaner, easier to feed and keep, elegant in its simplicity—”

“Dad taught you this?” Dante felt a pang, wondering why he’d been left out of the lesson.

“No,” said Vergil. “Not in so many words. I watched him.”

“You watch everything, don’t you.”

“Of course,” he murmured, like the question was charmingly absurd. “How else do you learn?”

“I don’t know. Seems to me some people are just naturally good at stuff. Like their talent is just…being talented.” 

“Maybe so. Though great talent alone is rarely a match for perseverance alone. But if you have both…” Dante watched him pick up the first log and settle it into the cradled embrace of the twin andirons, which were adorned with neoclassical faces. Some god or another. Some god and his brother. “Then you have the whole scaffold, on which to hold the world.”

Dante was silent.

Vergil placed another, and stacked a third and forth crosswise over them. “Fire needs air, otherwise it’ll smother out and founder. That’s why you stack them like this, log-cabin style, so it can circulate.” He eyed the logs and settled them, brushing his hands off.

He crumpled up several balls of newspaper and pushed them into the space between the four logs. Then he added a generous amount of thin wooden shards from a basket off to the side. “This is your kindling,” he said. “It catches fire faster than the larger logs, but burns long enough to help them catch.” 

“Got it,” said Dante, studying it, taking an absent sip as he did. It was weird to think there was a whole proper procedure for setting shit on fire, but it figured that if anybody knew about it, Vergil would.

“Last, you need more tinder. It’s what sets your kindling alight.” With practiced motions, Vergil took a section of newspaper and tore it into long strips. He tucked the strips of paper deftly in and amongst the kindling, around and beneath the stacked quartet of logs. “You see?” 

He struck a match, touching it to the ends of the paper, each of which curled like a dark smile, drawing inward like a tentacle, carrying its blight of fire back to the inner sanctum of untouched wood. He picked up a bellows from beside the hearth and gave the nascent flames a few good pumps, sending up sparks.

“And there you have it. In a few minutes we should have a good blaze going.”

“Why’d you open the window?” asked Dante, suddenly, remembering it, glancing at it. The mist outside continued its dreamy shrouding of the dark and sleeping city, rendering it almost unreal; a set-piece with a backdrop of gauze.

Vergil smiled just as suddenly, and Dante knew he was pleased. “I forgot to mention that. Fires suck a lot of air out of a room through the chimney, so opening a window just gives it fresh air to draw from.”

“So it burns better.” Dante nodded. “I get it.”

Vergil crossed to the wall and hit the switches, sending the room into warm semidarkness, lit only by the moon and fire. He sighed as he settled back into his place, his side of the sofa, and picked up his drink. “Cheers,” he said, raising it slightly before taking a sip. “What do you think of my concoction?”

“You were right. I like it.”

“Good.” Vergil sighed again, letting his head fall back against the couch for a moment, taking another sip.

The crackling was starting in earnest, now, as the fire established its presence, slowly devouring the wood with luxurious licks of flame. Heat emanated, bathing Dante’s naked skin in flickering warmth, casting deep silken shadows along his brother’s robe.

“What a night,” Vergil said softly.

Dante stared down at the drink in his hand. “It’s not over, is it?”

He wanted more. He always wanted more, driven to fight or fuck until he reached the point of satiety. And he wanted Vergil like he’d never wanted anything before. But it was also the only way he could think of to get back to the stripped, unstudied intimacy of the afterglow, to batter himself back down to that staggered state where he could justify relenting to his brother’s weapons-grade tenderness.

“Of course not,” assured Vergil, in a fervent hush. “And when it is, there will be another, and another, and another. As many as we want. As long as we want them. And all the days, too.”

Dante shuddered as the moment pressed against his senses; the primal fire and its sultry glow, warmth and liquor and silk and leather, his aching arousal and his brother’s passionate intonation—a promise, for tonight and beyond.

“Come here, Dante,” Vergil said quietly.  
  
Dante shifted on the couch, moving toward him, heart and loins pulsing, letting the pillow fall by the wayside.

“Will you do something for me?”

There was a beat of silence, filled only by the flames. 

“Yeah.” The word came, reckless and without hesitation. Dante felt loaded, disinhibited; drunk with apprehension and anticipation in equal parts. Vergil shook an even more exotic cocktail inside him than he did in a glass. “Whatever you want.”

He had a feeling he knew.

Vergil stripped his gloves off, slowly. “Put your head in my lap.”

“…What?”

“Stretch out on the couch. Come on.”

“I don’t understand.”

Vergil reached for the back of his neck; gazed into his eyes and guided him down. His body obeyed. He felt his head come to rest on cool silk, aware of his brother’s solidity beneath, Vergil’s hand settling on his chest in gentle possession. The other found his hair, fingers carding through the unruly mohawk, palm stroking it back from his brow, sending up tingles like the sparks from the fire.

“I still can’t believe I found you. I was starting to think I never would.” He sighed, a sound that came from somewhere deep. “I just want to sit here and touch you for a while, if that’s all right.” For a moment he paused; his words, but not his caress. When he spoke again, it was with solicitous concern. “Do you mind?”

“Nah,” said Dante, closing his eyes. “I don’t mind.” Relief washed over him, along with endorphins, in spite of his willful nonchalance. “Whatever you need.”


	5. Chapter 5

"My loving friend, you see, my life was never given a foundation, no one was able to imagine what it would want to become. In Venice there stands the so-called Ca del Duca, a princely foundation, on which later the most wretched tenement came to be built. With me it's the opposite: the beautiful arched elevations of my spirit rest on the most tentative beginning; a wooden scaffolding, a few boards....Is that why I feel inhibited in raising the nave, the tower to which the weight of the great bells is to be hoisted (by angels--who else could do it)?"  
  
\- Rainer Maria Rilke  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Dante let himself be lulled, for once—under the pulse of the fire, under Vergil’s mantric hands—laid bare, wrapped only in the darkness that surrounded them.

It had been years since anyone touched him like this. Before Paradise, and the restoration of his memories, he’d have said never. 

Demon institutions dispensed pills and punitions, not tenderness. There had been no one to run to, no one to hold him or stroke his head. No one in the world who cared. In forgetting his childhood, he’d forgotten that affection had ever existed for him. 

But even with his mind wiped, his body had held those memories, longed for this state. He’d chased sensation in a sea of strippers, two or more at a time. Dove down to the bottom of a whiskey bottle seeking the warm euphoria of an altered state. Took long, scorching showers until the water in the trailer tank went cold. Sex was fast food. It abated the ache, kept him drained and sated, but ultimately left him hollow: over-fed and undernourished, without him ever knowing.

Now he could actually remember feeling this way; indulged, adored—when he was small. Under his mother’s arm while she read, feeling her absent fingers stroking his obstinate cowlicks; curled against his father on the couch while they watched TV. Safe harbor, under hands that cherished him.

_That was love._

But it was different with Vergil.

His brother’s touch, though soothing and nurturing, was far from innocent. It carried the carnal weight of what they’d done, and a strong subterranean passion; the quiet, unspoken promise, or beautiful threat, of more. With blissful languor came sensual awareness, spreading all through him like night-blooming vines, even as the firelight flickered, beating against his naked body in intermittent waves of amber warmth.

He didn’t know how long it had been. He thought maybe half an hour. He knew he hadn’t dozed off, intent as he was on steeping in the moment and its sustenance; absorbing the full emotional brunt of each mindless caress.

Dante stirred, head rolling on Vergil’s thigh, displacing silk, and with it the illusion of any real barrier between himself and his brother’s absurdly overwrought cock. His heart jackknifed quietly as he registered its undeniable presence. 

He could feel it against his cheek, rising like a leviathan. Called forth from its slumber.

Dante stared into the fire, feeling his lips part, channeling every ounce of irreverence he had left into a desultory snort. “Are you hard right now, Vergil? Because all of a sudden it kinda feels like there’s a rocket launcher pointed at my head.”

Vergil laughed; it was gentle, rueful. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just…your breath against me. And your scent, and your body.” As if to illustrate, he ran a slow hand down Dante’s side, dipping in to feel his intercostals, his adonis belt, lingering over the curve of his ass. “It’s everything.”

Dante groaned inwardly at his brother’s casual trespass. “No need to apologize. I’m a sexy motherfucker.”

“A quality exceeded only by your humility,” said Vergil, and Dante silently savored the smile in his voice.

Dante stretched, luxuriantly, letting his body elongate, undulate, and retract back into lassitude. “Tell the truth, Vergil: were you gonna try to slip it in my mouth?”

“What? No.”

“Come on. Get me all relaxed, lull me into a false sense of security…”

“Never.”

“Like offering a girl a ‘massage’…”

“Are these those trust issues you were mentioning?” murmured Vergil dryly.

“Maybe.” Dante paused, drawing back onto his hands. His gaze lingered on cryptic silk and the bulge beneath for a beat before raising boldly. “Or I don’t know, Vergil—maybe it’s a fucking hint.”

Vergil stared for a moment, then reached down, slowly untying his robe, letting it fall open. 

Dante’s breath caught with a violence he hadn’t predicted.

“How’s that for a hint?” Vergil said, quietly.

He was a hedonist vision against the rich tufted leather; a long unbroken swath of smooth, luminous fire-lit flesh marked only by shadow and muscle; a perfect sculpture in sensual repose, cradled in a dark pool of spilled blue. Dante’s eyes dove down, past his brother’s graven abdomen, down to the angled ledges of his loins—nature’s brazen arrow, leading to the beast itself. Both a promise and a warning.

“That’s a pretty big hint.”

“Maybe you should take it.”

Dante felt his throat click as his lips parted to speak. “Maybe I will.” 

Vergil spread his arms across the back of the couch. “What’s stopping you?” His posture was expansive and indolent, a small dark smirk just staining the corners of his lips. 

Dante had seen that rare smile surface now and again in his brother’s smooth, virtuous waters, as zealous and intense as the earnest dedication that defined him. In other moments, it had given him pause. In this context it only made his cock twinge. “Nothing I can’t get over.”

After a beat he shifted, sliding off the couch and onto the ornate kilim rug, rising to his knees before his brother. It felt strange, disquieting, to be there—

_Caged._

_Cradled?_

_Maybe both._

—between Vergil’s thighs. But it didn’t feel threatening, and it only felt wrong in the best kind of loins-tightening way.

Vergil gazed down at him in faint disbelief, his eyes liquid-bright; opal in the fireglow.

Dante stared back. “Is your pet friendly, mister?”

“Mostly.” The word was a soft intonation, a breath of spun silk, like Dante was a wary wild animal he didn’t want to spook.

“Gentle giant, right?”

“Absolutely. What’s more, I think he likes you.”

Dante could feel the fire, its warmth bathing his bare back and flanks. It suddenly felt inevitable, that he would end up here; no matter what resistance he put up, no matter what path he took. That he would ultimately succumb to trust, and his brother’s unvarnished charm. 

Now seemed as good a time as any.

Vergil’s cock lay back heavy against his stomach, reclining along with the rest of him. Dante had to admit it was a beautiful appendage, objectively aesthetic, and never more so than right now in the amber twilight cast by the flames. He glanced down briefly, reflexively, at his own. It didn’t look half-bad, either—and it definitely wasn’t half-mast. Firelight apparently just really suited dicks, made them look like lush, sumptuous objects in a renaissance still life.

But this was no painting. It was a sculpture, and he could touch it.

He did so, all at once, reaching out to grasp its heft, feeling its weight and solidity as his fingers wrapped around its heated girth. It felt substantial, an object of ancient purpose—a Devil Arm no less powerful than Arbiter or Revenant, pulsing in his hand, stirred by his touch, both impossibly hard and unbelievably soft all at once. He breathed out; half astonished, half in relief. 

“Didn’t think I’d do it, did you.”

Vergil gave a strangled laugh; halting, breathless, overcome. “I hoped you would.”

“It’s so fucking hard,” Dante whispered, incredulous. “What the fuck.”

“That’s because literally half my blood is in it right now,” Vergil muttered, arm over his eyes. 

Dante stroked it slowly, pushing his thumb up under the notch in the corona, the way his brother had done to him, the way he liked to do to himself. Vergil’s thighs and lips tensed. “Why aren’t you watching?” Dante murmured. He couldn’t sieve the slight goading from his tone.

“I don’t want to make you self-conscious.”

“Look at me, Vergil.” Dante’s hand gripped and slid, hard and slow. “I know you want to.”

Dante had never liked being ignored, or dismissed. He’d often felt abandoned, in his youth; shunted into the system, shelved and forgotten, left to knock around inside the dark machine.

But Vergil never made him feel that way, he realized consciously for the first time, as the lack of his brother’s steady gaze made him ache.

“Are you sure?” Vergil said, after a moment.

“I’m not putting on a show for no one.”

Slowly, Vergil lowered his arm, letting it come to rest at his side. “Then show me something worth seeing.”

His voice was low, loaded in a way that made Dante’s pulse somersault. Vergil’s chest rose and fell, the motion gentle but perceptibly heightened in pace. His gaze was measured, but beneath it Dante could see the truth—a hunger he was holding back with both hands.

It sparked something reciprocal in him, and he found himself leaning in. “Look, I’ve never done this before, all right?” He ran his hands up the inside of his brother’s thighs, keeping his eyes locked on Vergil’s.“I’ll probably suck at it, but you’ll be the first. Do you wanna be the first, Vergil?”

“I’d like that very much.”

“And that’s how it should go, the first time.”

Vergil’s sudden expression of abject contrition stabbed Dante through and through, and he regretted saying it immediately. “Point made, and taken. I deserved that.”

“Fuck, don’t look at me like that.” He pumped his brother’s cock harder, putting some arm into it. “This isn’t a funeral, all right?” Vergil’s cock issued a generous, glistening bead of viscous pre-cum in response and Dante groaned as his fingers encountered it, spreading it over the head in the course of keeping their rhythmic vigil. “Christ.”

“Does it turn you on, doing that?”

“Does it matter?” Dante didn’t look at him.

“It certainly seems like it.”

“So that’s your kink.” Dante was pretty sure he’d nailed it. 

Vergil glanced at him, bemused. “Beg pardon?”

“Someone has to be into what they’re doing to you. They have to want it. Otherwise you can’t get off on it.”

“I…wouldn’t really call that a kink.”

Dante gave a dubious snort. “You wouldn’t?”

“No,” said Vergil. “That’s more like…a basic empathetic desire for mutuality.”

“Whatever, pervert.”

Vergil looked askance. “What happened to you out there?”

“It’s probably more about what didn’t,” Dante muttered, in a rare moment of emetic introspection. Right after the words left him, he couldn’t think of a single reason to have said it out loud, but Vergil seemed to glean some insight from it.

“Interesting,” he said quietly. “That makes perfect sense, actually.”

Dante snorted. “Glad I make sense to someone.”

“Dante, listen: maybe we should go upstairs. To bed.”

“You’re in my bed, Vergil.”

This was where he’d lain his head, ever since he’d come to stay. And this was their domicile, their shared domain, if Vergil was telling the truth.

He felt a strange urge to reclaim this room, this territory that was theirs—a space removed and sacrosanct, away from friends and strangers, humans or angels or demons of any kind. Anoint it with the same consecration as they’d given the loft.

“Yeah, about that…” Vergil began, a different note entering his voice. “Don’t you think maybe after tonight—”

“Do you mind? I’m trying to suck your cock here.”

“By all means. Don’t let me stop you.”

He had every benediction. And yet, he hesitated at the precipice.

Vergil reached down with a blurred smile, fingers finding his hair, carding it with idle, carnal affection. “Come on. Where’s my cocksure brother?”

“Yeah, gotta say I’m feeling pretty cock-unsure right now.”

“You’re hilarious.”

“You think I’m kidding. That thing’s not exactly a starter model.”

“Give it time. Soon you’ll wonder how you lived without it.”

_That’s what I’m fuckin’ afraid of._

“Push my head down.” Dante closed his eyes; he was hard enough to see stars.

Vergil stared at him for a long moment. “No,” he said, abruptly.

“What the fuck? Why not? You want your dick sucked, don’t you?”

“Forcing you to do this has no meaning. When you come to me, I want you to come freely. Because you trust me. Because you want me. Not because I compelled or coerced you.”

“I want to do it, Vergil,” Dante bit out, sharply. He paused, eyes averted, sawing his jaw. “I just need a push, all right?” 

Vergil sighed, looking up at the ceiling. “Fine. If that’s how you—”

“Like when we were little kids, out back on the dock. The sea was always cold at first, remember? We dreaded that part. You always dove right in, got it over with fast.”

He remembered being startled by the sudden unthinking arc of his brother’s up-flung arms and subsequent knifelike plunge, his form automatic and impeccable. Sometimes he was visible, shooting sleek and clean beneath the surface, sometimes he simply disappeared for what seemed like forever—many breathless beats that Dante held with him. Eventually his pale head would break the satin surface somewhere else, far from where he’d first split the waves. He remembered Vergil looking up at him from the sunlit water, treading amidst the glittering motes, white hair sleek against his scalp, telling him to just jump in and get it over with. Get over himself, so they could have fun.

“But I’d sorta procrastinate and hang out on the edge. So you’d push me in.”

It would take Vergil only five swift crawl strokes to reach the dock once more and haul himself up on the platform. Then he would come for Dante, and shove him off the edge with no ceremony, but plenty of flourish. Sometimes his approach would be more of a tackle that took them both over. If Dante was ready for him, they would tussle at the end, and tumble in together.

It was a ritual, both expected and appreciated on some unspoken level. He could count on his brother both to have his back, and to urge him on, past limbo and on to better things. 

“I just need a push, Vergil. Like that.” Dante swallowed, raising his eyes to his brother’s, feeling a deep sensual twinge at the recent memory. “...Like when you kissed me.”

Something seemed to dawn in Vergil’s eyes at the words; a recognition. He said nothing, just reached for the back of Dante’s neck, fingers caressing his nape as he guided him down.

Dante shuddered, but didn’t resist. On the verge of confronting the gleaming, arrowed glans he averted his eyes and his head, reflexively, like he had when faced with Vergil’s lips. Vergil grasped his jaw, steering him back with gentle persuasion.

The scent that emanated from his brother’s loins was pheromonal, breathtaking—steeped in the deep sea, salt and earth and musky masculinity, an intoxicant unlike anything Dante had ever drawn into his body. He breathed deep, shuddering again, letting it permeate his senses.

Vergil grasped his own cock, rubbing the head over Dante’s face, slowly, stirring his passive lips. It was soft, almost caressing, and he had to stop himself from responding, turning into its touch and rubbing back.

“Just one taste,” Vergil murmured. “Just the tip. You never know. You might like it. You liked the sashimi, didn’t you? What’s a little more raw meat, brother?”

_We drink. I kiss you. Then we’ll know._

Glowering, Dante let his lips ease, parting to admit the glans. Vergil fed himself past the threshold slowly. “There you go,” he breathed. Dante was overcome all at once, by shape and scent and contour and pulsatile heat, all held in his mouth’s embrace. “Not so bad, is it.”

In the next beat Dante shifted forward, leaning into it, instinct and impulse taking over, overriding all his qualms, obliterating his reticence. He re-gripped the base and surged into swallowing, letting his mouth encompass the throbbing length, suddenly galvanized, fascinated by the act, the sensation of it.

“That’s it,” came Vergil’s whisper from above, suddenly threadbare in the stillness. “My God, Dante. I—”

He broke off, letting his head fall back with a groan that sounded torn from the lining of his soul.

Dante devoured that sound, even as he devoured Vergil’s hard flesh; he savored every inch of both. Vergil’s cock slid heavy against his tongue, flaring the contours of his mouth with its broad existence, testing its boundaries with each downstroke. “Fuck,” he broke off long enough to mutter, before plunging back into it again.

His hand found the flat of his brother’s stomach, stroking in a circle, wordlessly urging. Vergil settled in low, back against the leather, thighs eased outward, taut and trembling.

He heard a soft rumble of thunder, far away, high above, somewhere beyond the shifting mist. If Vergil was right, it was entirely possible heaven knew what was happening. That the angels felt some celestial disturbance in the status quo. Maybe Limbo did too. He didn’t know if this was TV or radio. _Fuck em. Either way, might as well give them a show._

Dante threw himself forward over Vergil’s lap with primal insistence, embracing his waist, grasping his flanks, focused and devoted as a man at an altar; his dark head rising and falling, fast and punishing, then slowing, twisting, torturous, eyes furtively flicking upward, intermittently, a fraction of second at a time, to reassure himself his brother wasn’t just being polite. The length was more than he could take—

_In the mouth, anyway—_

_God, what the fuck is wrong with you? You’re not seriously considering letting him put it in you, this thing’s a fucking juggernaut—_

—but it didn’t stop him from trying. He made up the difference with his fist, holding the base tightly as he worked it over with his lips and tongue, plunging and undulating with controlled violence and wanton abandon, the way the strippers did to him. They knew how to make it look good as well as feel good, so he figured Vergil would like getting it as much as he did. 

What he hadn’t anticipated was how much he liked doing it.

Below, his own rock-hard cock swung stiff between his thighs, weighted and aching. He gave his balls a mindless tug to dispel the tension.

“God yes,” whispered Vergil. “Touch yourself, Dante.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said, hearing a shake in his own voice. _Not too much. Just a little._

He grasped his own cock with his free hand, overhand, bringing himself off along with Vergil, matching the strokes to the motions of his head. A moan escaped him immediately, muffled and distorted by his brother’s unyielding flesh. _Careful._

It was maybe a little too good, linking what he was doing and what he was feeling, bombarded by both sensations, conflating the two like cause and effect. He eased up on his stroking, teasing himself just enough to keep the fire primed.

_Kindling._

His eyes cast up in urgency; seeking Vergil, drinking him in—his tipped-back chin, the strong, smooth line of his jaw, the sensual column of his neck, the prominence of his Adam’s apple like an ornament in marble. His brother received pleasure like the blasphemous unplanned demigod he was—there was no apology in his exultation, no self-consciousness in his sin. Even his hedonism was earnest.

“You like this?” Dante’s voice was low, rough, breathless; he paused to swirl his tongue over the head, dipping the tip into the slit that welled with lucid dew, savoring its viscid consistency. “You like it when your own brother sucks you off?” 

“Yes.”

“Tell me how it feels.”

“I’ve waited my whole life to feel like this.” 

Dante shuddered. “That’s not how you talk dirty,” he muttered, but his body disagreed. He lunged back into the act with renewed ferocity, upping the ante each time, sheathing Vergil’s massive prick deeper in his working throat, hearing his brother’s response, an escalating series of guttural utterances that Dante felt in his soul. At the zenith of his frenzy, he got a little overambitious and ended up retching.

“Easy,” breathed Vergil, his hands coming to rest firmly on Dante’s shoulders, bracing him back, and the sudden blaze of concern in his voice and his eyes just made Dante harder. 

“Supposed to be hot when they choke, right?” Dante muttered. “Means you’re big.”

“I already know it’s big. I don’t need your gag reflex to tell me.” Vergil’s hand reached up to cup his face, thumb caressing his cheek and lips. “Careful with yourself,” he said softly. “You are mine, after all.”

_Fuck._ Dante closed his eyes against the words. _Way to hit a guy when he’s already down on his knees._

He stroked Vergil’s thick beast viciously a few times while he gathered himself, then resumed, slowing his approach, concentrating on responding in the only language he’d ever fully trusted, where he was never at a loss for expression.

He remembered his own semi-grinning admonitions to the strippers. _Hey, hey, ladies—don’t neglect the sac, all right?_ Now that he was the one with a monstrous dick in his face, he found the grace to feel a little chagrined about his glib, offhand demands. Still, it was good advice, and given his current circumstances Dante wasn’t above taking his own medicine.

He released Vergil’s heavy cock slowly, spit-slicked and gleaming, to the night air and firelight—lifting it, pushing it back up against his stomach and holding it there to expose his brother’s scrotum, which hung in tantalizing asymmetry; taut, soft-skinned and succulent against the wide-rooted trunk of the shaft. Dante leaned in, nuzzling their sensitive fullness, nestling his lips and nose between them, against the seam, tongue tracing it like a paintbrush, taking each testicle in between his lips to suckle in turn, rolling them gently in his mouth. 

They felt surreal and luscious—the crepe skin soft as peaches, but with the ripe gravity and sensuous blush of plums, surrounded by a dark, pungent musk that he couldn’t huff hard enough.

When his eyes flicked up he found Vergil watching him, lips parted, light gaze hazed and languid with desire. _You like that._

_Yeah. I like that too._

He fell back to cock-sucking with a vengeance, bowing low over his brother’s lap, pressing ever inward, melting into his legs’ embrace. The skin of Vergil’s naked thighs was soft against his sides, the fire warm on his back, the Turkish carpet lush beneath his knees.

Below, his cock panged brutally, straining against itself, head blushing a hard rose, foreskin stretched taut. Growing pains, he thought, as he rose and fell, bobbing with rhythmic vigor. _Shot up another inch, mom. Look, no hands._

He ran his palm up Vergil’s torso, greedily reading his physique, and felt Vergil’s hand capture his own, curving passionately around it before lacing their fingers together. The thrill that shot through him was immediate, indecent. It was electric to be touched anywhere by his brother, but particularly there, in that way and in this moment. 

_How fucked up are you, you warped fucking freak, that a fucking thing like that gets you off? That you find something forbidden and unthinkable about fucking_ holding hands? He grimaced, shoving the thought out of his head, shoving the cock deeper in.

He could sense that Vergil was close; tells he knew from himself. Tension and breath, sounds and expression—physical responses that mirrored his own. But it was more than that. Empathetic resonance suffused him as Vergil groaned and shifted beneath his unremitting efforts. 

His brother’s other hand had lingered all the while—absent fingers playing through his mohawk, stirring the short cropped hairs on the side, mindlessly fondling the longer top with luxuriant negligence—but now it settled into cupping his skull, riding his motions as Vergil’s loins arched subtly, rhythmically, to meet his ministrations.

His brother was far too much of a gentleman to ever fuck his face or shove his head down at the deepest part of the stroke, the way the strippers demanded of him, and the way Dante had willingly obliged. At the time he’d been game enough. _Fuck yeah women’s lib, own it babe, so empowered, fuck yeah._ It occurred to him now that the majority of those girls were probably following some generic gonzo skin-flick script, gamely giving him what they assumed all men wanted—not expressing an organic desire of their own. And he’d been following a script, too. Acting exactly as he was prompted and conditioned and expected to. 

The world under Mundus’ thumb was pornographic in every dimension; auto-tuned, inorganic, hyper-saturated—sex, lies and social laudanum, astro-turf and narcissistic artifice, short attention spans and constant carnal distractions. Each dopamine-driven loop was fleeting, insignificant to existence. Even if you hit that button again and again, it never amounted to any sustenance, never accumulated to anything, never culminated in any greater sum. It all fell away—resolved into adieu, evaporated into obsolescence. It was no wonder he was always left hungry for substance, staring into the refrigerator, no matter how much he indulged and consumed.

But everything was different now.

All he wanted to consume in the moment was Vergil.

_Come on, baby. Feed me something real._

“Dante.” His brother invoked his name like a sacred word, ecstasy undershot with a pitched note of urgency. The word carried warning, implicit and unspoken. Vergil was trying to spare him the fallout, the liquid indignity of his climax. “You need to stop if you don’t want—”

“You think I don’t want this?” Dante pulled his mouth off his brother’s massive cock just long enough to retort, fist working over the well-slicked length, sustaining his rhythm with ferocious strokes. “You think I dislocated my fucking jaw for nothing?”

Vergil groaned. His loins and thighs flexed, undulated, micro-tremors chasing down their strong, twining lines, as if he strove to weather the onslaught, master the spiraling sensation, postpone his capitulation. Dante wasn’t going to let him do that.

_I’m gonna suck you dry, brother. Milk all those inches. Deal with it._

His brother was on the edge, and Dante had every intention of pushing him over.

The strippers had a finishing move, one that was pure kryptonite. They would grip the base like they hated it, upping the suction and intensity to near-violent levels, mouth popping off the head with each stoke. Between the sound and the sensation, it never failed to fuck him up in record time. He would either have to flip the script quick or blow a load.

He did it to Vergil now, rising and falling, diving into each descent like a raptor. He found himself relishing the act, which was both primal and playful in its aggression, and that felt pretty on-brand for fraternal misbehavior. A soft, taut, smacking pop accompanied each slip of his lips off the glans, and after just a few strokes Vergil’s hand tightened around his own, where their fingers were still woven together.

His heart panged hard, hit with a piano hammer, and he risked a glance upward. Vergil’s lips were parted, eyes closed, a deep stitch between his angled brows. He looked exquisite, conflicted, his features beautifully contorted at the cusp of climax—the suffering saint, again, at the mercy of some unknown torment that seemed more erotic than anything else.

It flooded Dante with emotions he couldn’t name, to see Vergil look that way, undone before him and delirious with desire; to know that he alone was the cause, the sole catalyst and architect of his ecstasy.

He could feel his own excitement mounting, reaching a fevered pitch; his cock aching, his heart pounding.

_Come for me, baby. Just for me. You look so goddamn good like this. So fucking good._

His brother’s breath was light and shallow, head and shoulders thrown back against sensation, languishing under his onslaught. “Oh God,” he heard him utter, on the lee side of a breath. He gave a rough, sustained groan that escalated to a low, staggered cry.

_Oh fuck yeah._

Dante stabbed his head down with a vengeance.

Vergil shot off stratospherically, exploding at the end of the stroke, at the back of his throat, cock wracked with muscular convulsions in his mouth’s tight embrace, blast after blast, recoiling like a gun. His brother’s flavor invaded him, thickly bittersweet; brine and treacle, oyster with notes of smoke and honey, seizing his senses with its sudden abundance, lustrous with salt, spilling over his tongue, flooding his mouth.

_Fuck_.

He didn’t manage to swallow it all; a few lucid trickles of liquid pearl escaped his lips, rolling down the shaft like candle wax. He chased them at once, plunging his mouth down the length, leaving it sleek and clean as he withdrew.

Beneath him, Vergil shuddered.

He let himself fall forward for a long moment, over the altar formed by his brother’s loins and thighs, licking his lips, swallowing, breathing, letting himself steep in the deep, primal scent of satiation that radiated from beneath in the indecent aftermath. Then he raised his face to Vergil slowly and silently, breathless and disheveled, like a gladiator to Caesar.

“Dante,” his brother said softly.

“Yeah.”

Throughout it all, the sky had been strangely quiet. Heaven was as breathless as he was.

“Words fail me.”

“You can say things without words, Vergil.” Dante paused. “I just did.”

Vergil held his gaze, eyes brimming with something vast and unfathomable. Warmth flowed from his every aspect and Dante wanted to close his eyes and bask in it, like the fire; embraced on both sides. 

But he couldn’t bring himself to look away from the heart-stopping picture Vergil made, luminous in the wake of taking his pleasure. Even sated and languid, his animating passion remained undiminished; lulled and mollified, it merely smoldered quietly in the background of his being. His well-groomed hair was infinitesimally disheveled—it was scarcely apparent, but Dante saw it, clocked it; that perfect ivory sweep of a forelock to one side of his brow that always hovered just so, held in check as if by some dark natural science, had shifted during their tryst, drifting, falling ever-so-slightly out of alignment.

Dante felt conflicted at that pale raw-silk skein; he wanted to reach up and fix it, he wanted to mess it up more. He wanted to restore its former glory, he wanted to contribute to its delinquency. He did neither, and knew he would do nothing, so long as Vergil’s hand still held his.

“We’re not finished are we?” Dante stared up at his brother’s face, knowing he seemed a little unhinged; a little intense. “After that…I could use one more round.” 

“You should see your eyes right now. Amazing.” Vergil gazed at him with ardent, unvarnished appreciation. “Of course we’re not done. Why don’t you go upstairs? Warm up the bed and wait for me.”

“Yeah, okay. Sure.” He felt Vergil’s fingers slip from his after a lingering squeeze and grappled with the strange sense of loss that came with it. “What about the fire?”

“Don’t worry. It’ll burn itself out.”

“Does the one upstairs work too?”

“The fireplace? Absolutely.”

“Good. I liked it.” Dante paused for a beat, then clarified. “Having a fire, I mean.”

“Of course.” Vergil raised an eyebrow, drawing the silken sides of his robe closed and tying the sash with a minimal, effective gesture. “What else could you mean?”

Dante squinted, uncertainly. “What are you gonna do down here?”

“I’m going to run the dishwasher,” said Vergil with a faint smile. “How’s that for domesticity?”

“I guess it’ll do.” Dante’s voice came out wrong; dried down to a whisper. He cleared his throat.

“Go on. I’ll be up in a minute.”


	6. Chapter 6

Every angel is terrifying. And yet, alas, I invoke you,  
almost deadly birds of the soul, knowing about you.  
Where are the days of Tobias, when one of you, veiling his radiance,   
stood at the front door, slightly disguised for the journey, no longer appalling;  
(a young man like the one who curiously peeked through the window).  
But if the archangel now, perilous, from behind the stars took even one step down toward us:  
our own heart, beating higher and higher, would beat us to death.  
Who _are_ you?

\- Rilke

Vergil hadn’t kissed him.

_What the fuck._

It only occurred to him now, as he knelt in front of the fireplace, still aching obscenely, concentrating on replicating the casual ritual his brother had performed before him. From the loft, he could hear sounds below; intermittent, ordinary stirrings as Vergil set things right. Against all sense, it sent a deep twinge through his loins.

_If this is domesticity, why’s it driving me so wild?_

As the flames caught and grew, Dante rose; straightened, primitively naked, pacing in front of the windows like a boxer between bouts, crossing his arms and rolling his shoulders to shake off the lustful restlessness that clung to him like smoke. Outside the vast grid of cold glass, the misty city dreamed, neon smeared here and there in her bleary skyline like last night’s makeup. He paused, gazing out at it for a moment, letting himself appreciate the view for the first time.

Dante wasn’t sure what to do with himself while he waited. Had Vergil been serious about the bed? Or had he meant it only as a figure of speech? His brother seemed to like those. Would he laugh if Dante took him literally? Or should he take Vergil at his word? 

_Warm up the bed and wait for me. _

His eyes sought the low, lavish bed with its artful tumble of fine linen, undeniably inviting to the eye. It looked soft and smooth and sumptuous, and he tried to imagine lying naked in its vast expanse, luxuriating beneath the downy weight of the duvet, engulfed on all sides by its cumulus warmth. He’d never been in a bed like that, like something from a movie or a magazine. The bed in his trailer had a real mattress and plain white bedding, but even that felt decadent after an adolescence spent in metal institutional twin beds and bunks, with their thin foam pads and scant blankets.

This particular bed wasn’t a twin bed, and yet it was, in the only way that mattered. Dante knew one thing about this bed—his brother had slept there last night, and steeped in these sheets. His scent would be present, lingering, impressed in the linen.

Dante felt his hand curl unconsciously.

_Should I get under the covers? _

The mere thought of the act filled him with an odd, powerful longing, even as it felt impossible to commit; overfamiliar, daunting in its presumption. They’d already been on it; he’d practically fucked Vergil right through it. What was the difference?

He spun away, rubbing his mohawk slowly, pacing again, letting his eyes wander over the room.

He hesitated at the sight of his discarded jeans and tank, strewn across the Turkish rug and wide-plank floor like debris from a bomb blast, wondering if he should put them back on. He’d never in his life thought twice about gratuitous nudity, walking around like a modern-day savage whenever it suited him, but suddenly it occurred to him that maybe there was such a thing as showing too much skin; that constant exposure could result in immunity. Vergil might become desensitized, inured to his physical charms.

_You’re crazy. His body looks pretty much like yours, and are you bored? Fuck no, you can’t get enough. _

On the other hand, ever since Vergil had put on that fucking robe, Dante had been dying to get under it.

_Yeah, okay. New level. Reload. Respawn. Reset the mystery._

He had his jeans on and his shirt in hand when he heard his brother’s light, steady tread on the staircase. Vergil appeared on the landing and Dante’s senses lit up all over again at the sight of him. He looked nothing like a guy who’d just been fellated in full view of heaven, who’d come for his long-lost brother with an uncivilized cry, fingers interlocked and palm against palm, shooting off in a hot, violent deluge that still lingered on Dante’s tongue.

The only tell was the soft, sated glow on his luminous features, and the way his gaze settled on Dante, caressing him gently as falling snow. It was the first time Dante had ever seen the perpetual intensity blunted in his brother’s eyes, melted down to a burnished contentment. His glance cut at once to Vergil’s brow, impulsively seeking that scarcely-wayward slip of white, only to find it immaculate again.

Dante squinted. “Did you fix your hair?” 

Vergil’s lips parted. “A little.”

“Wow. For me? I don’t know what to say. I’m really flattered, Verge.”

“You’re getting dressed.” Vergil seemed bewildered, unsure what to make of this.

“Got cold,” Dante lied, with a shrug.

“Why didn’t you just get in bed?”

Dante shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

Vergil eyed him. “That tank top’s not exactly thermal. Do you want a robe?”

“No.”

Almost without looking, Vergil reached down and snatched his sweater from the floor. He held it out to Dante. “Here,” he said.

Dante took it, feeling the soft mahogany cashmere in his hands for a moment, resisting the urge to raise it to his nose and lips. “Nah, I’m good. You don’t want me wearing this. I’ll just ruin it. I’m a mess, and it’s expensive, right? Feels like it, anyway.”

“It’s expensive,” said Vergil quietly, “but you’re priceless.”

Vergil’s unadorned words still hit with the impact of sucker punch, but he was getting better at rolling with it. Absorbing the initial blow, if not yet the sentiment behind it. Staying on his feet instead of being knocked for a loop.

“All right,” said Dante, after a moment. He got under it, sliding his arms into the sleeves and hauling the sweater over his head. It settled onto his torso at once—a perfect fit, and unimaginably soft against his bare chest. The scent of his brother’s body bloomed and suffused him as it warmed to his skin, chased by soft notes of Vergil’s cologne. “Thanks.”

“It looks good on you.” Vergil paused, frowning. “Though if I’m honest, I prefer you out of it.”

Dante stared. “It’s already feeling warmer in here.”

He was secretly gratified by Vergil’s faint but obvious dismay at being abruptly deprived of his scenic view. _Guess it works both ways, huh. Looks like I was right after all._

But Vergil wasn’t one to dwell. 

“You built the fire.” His brother’s expression radiated pleasure and surprise—he was beginning to realize that what ever else you might say about him, Vergil was always genuine, and right now he was genuinely impressed. It sent a pulse of warmth throughout Dante, well beyond where the flames could reach, touching him in places he’d never felt before. Until now, he’d never known they’d existed, because they’d always been numb—cold and neglected as an unused hearth.

“I’m a quick study.” As the words left his lips, he was already moving toward Vergil, every impulse and intention distilled down to one. He caught up close in the next moment, grasping his brother by the lapels. “You didn’t kiss me.” Dante moved up on him even more, pressing in, eyes downcast and seeking his brother’s lips. At this proximity, his body thrummed with high-voltage arousal, tension clamoring to be displaced. “I think I earned it.”

Vergil’s gloved hands found him in turn, side and hip, his reciprocity unthinking; instinctive, immediate. His voice was curious, gently bewildered. “What do you mean?”

“After you sucked me off, I kissed you.” Dante ran his fingers down the fine silk and seized it again, knowing his voice sounded demanding; insolent and a little accusatory. “You didn’t kiss me, though.”

“You didn’t give me a chance,” Vergil said, blinking. “You asked if we were done and—”

“You wanted to?”

“Of course I wanted to.” Vergil’s light, sober gaze chased his, almost playfully. “I always want to.”

_Then do it now. Kiss me, you brilliant idiot, if you want to so bad._

“Okay. Yeah.” Dante wasn’t sure what else to say to that, but his qualms were mollified, hackles smoothed down once more, soothed by his brother’s unwavering sincerity. “Good.”

Vergil gazed at him for a moment longer, then reached out to cup his face in both hands. “Let me make it up to you.”

There was something in his voice that carried weight beyond the moment, that referred to things off-page, unseen, an edge of calm, resolute pleading that hinted at a past full of regrets he seemed desperate to atone for. Dante had no idea why; of everything that happened to him in his short life so far, all of it fucked, none of it had been Vergil’s fault. 

_He feels responsible for everyone and everything. He’s just that guy._

Vergil’s thumbs stroked his cheeks, slowly, as he expertly dragged out the moment, and Dante felt his body go into overdrive—at his brother’s touch, at being beheld this way, the sole focus of Vergil’s all-consuming passion and undivided attention. The latex against his skin was strangely stirring, even as he craved to feel his brother’s ungloved caress once more.

_Yeah, it works both ways. Fuck, does it ever work._

When his mouth touched down, Dante’s lips were already parted in ravenous welcome. Vergil poured into him slowly, rich and deep, sinking himself into the kiss body and soul, with devotional obscenity and languid abandon, even as Dante’s hands sank into his ivory hair and clutched there.

_This is so fucked up. Sorry, mom. Sorry, dad. Sorry I’m not sorry. _

He was still struggling to process the revelation he was left with in the wake of this night—that he’d been doing it wrong all his life. That nothing had ever moved him like his brother’s mouth on his, his brother’s tongue against his own. He couldn’t believe a little thing like a kiss was still a blast to the knees, after what they’d done to each other, but here he was, beside himself with yearning, aching deep in unspeakable places.

Vergil pulled back slowly, and Dante was pleased to see his softly heaving chest. “There,” he whispered. “Will that do?”

“It’s a start.” Dante pressed closer, insistent, breathing him in. “Fuck. You smell like sex and Christmas. What kind of body wash do you use?”

“Just…Harry’s. It’s just drugstore—” murmured Vergil, through half-parted, absent lips. “Fig,” he added belatedly.

“Doesn’t smell like figs.”

“I know.”

“Actually, I have no idea. What does a fuckin’ fig smell like?” His lips found Vergil’s neck and parted over his Adam’s Apple, sliding wantonly down to kiss the tender site of his pulse, tonguing lightly, open-mouthed.

“Not this.” He felt Vergil shudder as he spoke the words and savored this seismic shift in his brother’s resolute marble, happy to be the cause of it. “Dante—”

“Or is that your cologne? It’s cologne, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s on your sweater too. Something expensive, right? Smells like it.” He inhaled again, then groaned. “Smells fucking incredible.”

“It’s Creed. Aventus. But—”

On impulse Dante touched his brother’s face. He’d never done a thing like that before, and lust made the novel gesture clumsy, but judging by Vergil’s expression it didn’t seem to lessen the impact. “Don’t worry. I respect you, Verge, and I’ll respect you in the morning. But right now I really, really just need you.”

“What’s come over you?”

“More like who came in me, wouldn’t you say?” Dante countered in a rough hush.

“I wouldn’t,” said Vergil, with a shiver. “But I like hearing you say it.”

“Yeah? You like that? Keep listening, baby. I say all kinds of shit when I get into it.”

“Dante…” He felt another tremor pass through his brother and he savored it.

Vestiges of Vergil’s seed lingered on his tongue and palate, in all its ambrosial strangeness. It held a flavor he couldn’t describe, primal and rarified. Not that he’d ever tasted another guy’s spunk before. Apart from Vergil’s, he’d only ever sampled his own. He wondered if this was standard, or if it was only their angelic, diabolical issue that smacked of this bizarrely delectable blasphemy.

“Do humans taste like us?” Dante murmured. “You’ve sucked off a few.”

“No. They’re far more bitter, earthy. It’s sort of an acquired taste. Like beer.”

_Yeah? I hope you don’t mind giving it up._

“Come on,” Dante whispered, kissing his jaw, hands at his robe, grabbing at the sash. “Lose this.”

He felt Vergil’s hands cover his own, gently stilling them. Dimly, he sensed conflict in his brother, suddenly aware of his physical reticence, even before he spoke. “Dante, there’s something we should talk about.”

Dante paused, haltingly, slowly jolting out of his single-minded arousal. He clung to the feeling, clawing back to it, unwilling to relinquish it entirely. “What? Are you serious? Can’t it wait?”

“It shouldn’t,” Vergil said. “I don’t think.”

He released Dante’s hands slowly, even as they loosened and fell away. Dante was left crestfallen and struggling not to show it. Had his brother changed his mind, along with his hair? An irrational voice he refused to acknowledge as his own whispered sudden dread at the back of his mind.

_What is this? You’re scaring me. Come on. It doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters. Whatever it is, please. Please don’t do this to me._

In the next moment he banished it; cutting down his own thoughts, silencing them as savagely as any demon.

“So what is it?” He made sure to sound negligent, dismissive, almost bored. He reached across, grasping his opposite arm with his hand, unconsciously guarding his chest, aware of the soft, costly embrace of his brother’s sweater surrounding him, the intimate way it lay against his naked skin.

He watched as Vergil turned toward the windows for moment, watched the patterned silk draw taut and tapering across his sleek, broad-shouldered back as he tightened the sash before turning around to face him once more. He kept his eyes slightly averted, and his face wore a meditative expression, a stillness marking his smooth, patrician brow.

Vergil was quiet for a long moment, and when he spoke his voice was soft, and uncharacteristically hesitant. “Have you ever heard of orchid children and dandelion children, Dante?”

Dante snorted, as the first tentative strains of relief filtered through him like stray sunbeams. “You have a weird idea of pillow talk.” He shrugged, carelessly. “No. This more about the Westermark Effect?”

“Not quite.” Vergil’s smile was faint, distracted, and if he believed it, fond. “It’s a psychological allegory of sorts, about aptitude and nature, based on a Swedish folkloric idiom.”

“Oh, yeah. Wow. Of course. I see why this is relevant right now.”

“I thought you might have heard it in the hospital, or…”

“In the psych ward? Yeah, they didn’t really read us bedtime stories.”

“I suppose not.” Vergil’s tone was rueful, self-reproachful.

“So tell me one.” Dante heard his own voice quietly shift, away from insouciance and into reassurance.

“If I were to,” said Vergil, “it wouldn’t be this one.” He turned back to the windows for a moment, briefly gazing out, then walked across the room and sank back into the square, high-sided leather minimalism of the Van der Rohe chair.

Dante stared after him, uncertainly.

“Supposedly, a dandelion child is…resilient,” he began, as if there’d been no tangent or digression. “Able to survive, and even arguably thrive, under all sorts of adverse events, and remain…relatively unscathed, undaunted. Their circumstances don’t appreciably affect them or their ultimate trajectory. Even in abusive or unsupportive environments, or inhospitable conditions. They’re indomitable. Stubborn. Determined. Able to bloom anywhere. Like dandelions push through concrete.”

“They can take a lot of punishment, huh.”

Vergil flinched faintly. “After a manner of speaking.”

“Sounds familiar. So what’s the other one?”

Vergil paused, as if carefully selecting his words from an armoire. “An orchid child is…complicated. More…aware. Hyper-aware, even. Of context, of input. Hypocrisy. Highly intuitive, attuned to environment, sensitive to circumstance. They innately understand more about adult motivations from an early age, can easily read rooms, recognize unspoken truths and absorb them. Mistreated, or mishandled, the theory goes, they can end up going terribly wrong. But nurtured, mentored, loved—given guidance and a place to focus their abilities, they not only succeed, but thrive beyond all expectation. They can become flowers of rare and unusual beauty.”

“Wait, don’t tell me: that’s you.”

Vergil shook his head slowly. “I don’t think it really describes me, and I’ve never been a fan of pop psychology, or soft sciences over hard ones. But it’s not irrelevant either. Because that’s what our mother thought, based on the child-rearing books she’d read. It wasn’t the flower metaphor yet—back then they called it something else, but it’s the same idea. Childhood personalities, inherent aptitudes. It’s been around forever.” He sighed, smiling with difficulty. “Nothing new under the sun, right?”

Dante frowned slowly. “Human…kid-raising books? But…you said it yourself: we’re not even human.”

“I know,” Vergil said, in a rush. “And for what’s worth, Dante, I agree. But our mother thought she could raise us as humans. She thought it was all a matter of upbringing. Socialization. Nurture over nature. She wanted to believe it. And our father…”

“What about him?” prompted Dante flatly, as Vergil trailed off.

“Our father held no one’s thoughts and opinions higher. For better or…for worse.” His demeanor downshifted again, unusual reticence informing his gestures and expressions. Now it was like he was picking words from a crate of explosives. “And after she died…they guided his choices.”

“Guided them how?” Dante said it warily, as a picture was already forming, coalescing slowly in his mind. A suspicion about what Vergil was really saying, in the most diplomatic and delicate way.

“He let that…taxonomy…philosophy…inform…where he put us.” Vergil paused, first averting his eyes, then closing them. “To maximize his chances for vengeance against Mundus.”

Dante stared, as it all filtered down. “Wait a minute. So you’re saying our father made a guess, based on a self-help book and our personalities at _seven_, and decided who needed to go where. That you’d be the exceptional one, the one with the potential to enact his revenge. The mastermind. And I’d survive being thrown to the wolves, at best long enough to become your engine. Your tank. Your right arm. At worst, I’d keep the wolves from you. Is that it?”

“My ally, Dante.” Vergil looked stricken. “My aegis. Not my engine.” He leaned forward, hands clutching the arms of the chair, as if to reinforce his words. “We’re not divisible. We’re counterparts, on par, _ex aequo_. We have complementary gifts. Father understood that, even if he went about things wrong. He was young and arrogant. Separating us was…regrettable. Misguided. And yet it may have kept us both alive to meet again. To make all this possible.”

“This? Yeah?” Dante threw away a gesture. “You think this is what good old dad had in mind? Us, together like this? You on your knees with my cock down your throat? My tongue up your ass? That’s some dysfunctional family reunion.”

“_I don’t care what he had in mind_.” That savage edge was in his brother’s voice again, for the second time that night. Vergil rose all at once, surging out of his modern throne, and in three strides was before him once more, pressing his brow to Dante’s. His tone dropped, tempering to a quiet intensity. “I don’t care about anything but freeing the world. And you.” 

His breath was a light, quick pulse against Dante’s lips as he reached between them, sliding his palm over Dante’s cock with controlled force, grinding it beneath weathered black denim with a soothing, grounding impunity that Dante didn’t challenge.

He felt himself rise to meet the touch, blooming to hardness under his brother’s hand. He felt his heart open slowly like a thistle, little by little, petal by petal, stiff as they splayed.

Dante closed his eyes and leaned into the sensation, let himself savor the moment, brow to brow, steeping in the meeting of their fevers. Vergil’s murmur caressed the space between them.

“Father betrayed you, Dante. Maybe with the best intentions, maybe with deep misgivings, maybe because he knew you would survive, maybe because he thought he had no other choice—but he did. Father betrayed you, but I never will. Do you hear me? I will never betray you, Dante. No matter what.”

There was a long moment, where he grappled with the breath-ripping intimacy of that. 

“Vergil,” he managed to utter against his brother’s cheek. “You can do it. I want you to do it.”

“With you at my side, I can do anything. We can do anything. We’re unstoppable, Dante.” Vergil drew back just enough to look at him, stroking his face with the urgency of unvarnished adoration, and that dazzling, heroic smile all the while.

_That’s not what I fucking mean. _

“Vergil, listen to me. I need you. I need you to shut that sexy fuckin’ mouth of yours, come back to earth, and get down in the dirt with me.”

“Not yet,” Vergil intoned. He leaned in to press a soft, lingering kiss to Dante’s lips, maddeningly chaste, and it made Dante break out in a shudder. “There’s more to it. More that you need to know, brother. More that…I need to say.”

His composure was immaculate by all appearances, but Dante knew it was sheer force of will. He could feel the heat of his brother’s blood at being called out to play, the raw, intoxicating scent of his arousal; a primal desire that mirrored and amplified his own. 

And yet the fact that Vergil actually possessed the will, the self-control to master and sublimate it, was erotic in itself. His glacial calm did little to soothe Dante’s raging libido, but plenty to inflame it.

“If you want to talk,” he said, swallowing, "you’re gonna need to put some distance between us.”

“Understood.” Vergil looked as if he wanted to kiss Dante once more, but thought better of it. He slowly unhanded him, moving away with visible physical reluctance, returning to his chair.

Dante fell back against the wall and sank down, coming to rest on the floor, closing his eyes, arms resting on his knees. “You basically just told me our fucking father dumped me into the system because he thought it would build character.” He snorted quietly. “I really don’t know what else there is to say.”

Everything in him pulsed with the urge to be near Vergil again. He felt like more of a werewolf than a Nephilim; wrestling his nature and thwarting its carnal imperative. The tattoo on his back strobed sullenly, glowering with unspent potential.

“No, I’m saying he believed that character was already there. Innately. Not that it’s much better, but don’t get it twisted.”

“Don’t get it twisted, says my brother, who tells me it’s normal for us to feel like this. Who tells me he loves me, and not in a brotherly way.”

_And pushes me away when I start to believe him._

“We’ll get back to that,” Vergil said quietly. “But first I need to tell you why our father would have believed that. Why it would have made sense to him.”

“If it even matters,” said Dante, slouched back against the wall with bent knees akimbo, picking at a fraying place on his battered black jeans.

“It does to me, if only because of what I need to say to you.”

Dante nodded carefully, keeping his eyes on his task. “I’m not stopping you.”

Vergil sighed, steepling his fingers for a moment. “I don’t know how much you remember, but Eva took parenting seriously. She wanted to assimilate to their new life, be the best human mother she could be. We were precocious, of course, purely because we _weren’t_ human. Well before six, I remember I.Q. tests, aptitude tests, occupational tests, music lessons, mind-training activities, puzzles, art classes, tutors, gifted and talented curricula, talk of Gardiner’s Multiple Intelligences, and Bloom’s Taxonomy.”

“Me too.” Dante shrugged. “Never knew how I did on the tests, though.”

“No,” said Vergil, with a faint smile. “She would never want to predispose us to believe anything about ourselves by sharing that information. But she used them to guide our education, and where to weight it, where to concentrate each of our focuses. And dad handled the other stuff—honing our powers, nurturing the gifts of our heritage, both seraphic and demonic. They argued about it, sometimes, I remember. She thought we wouldn’t need it. It was her dream that we wouldn’t need it, but he insisted.”

Dante smirked. “Good thing he was a cynical demonic son-of-a-bitch, huh?”

“I’m not entirely happy he was so right, but…yes. Ultimately it proved wise.” 

Dante eyed him dubiously, wondering if Vergil really believed his own words—that he regretted having to wield the Yamato, or teleport, or summon swords, when he did these things with such a flourish, and such obvious relish. Dante knew how much he enjoyed his own powers, and doubted his brother loved it any less. _And why wouldn’t we? Shouldn’t a tiger love being a tiger? Doesn’t it?_

Their abilities were as innate, as genetically embossed as the brands on their backs—a biological marking no different than stripes.

“_Ultimately_ we only got formal combat training till we were seven, Verge. Maybe it set a foundation, but I learned most of my moves on the streets. I don’t know about you, but until Paradise, I was self-taught. Trial and error.” He shrugged. “School of hard knocks.”

_Very hard._

“Autodidactism.” Vergil leaned into his sudden smile. “_Yes_. Me too. Even estranged, we grew into ourselves, brother, exactly as we were destined to—apart and independently. A parallel evolution.”

As always, there was something in his inflection. Dante stared as a chill coursed through his torso, wondering not for the first time how Vergil managed to imbue non-erotic words with so much seduction.

“When Eva laid out her data on our aptitudes and made her case about our nascent personas, Sparda readily accepted it. Embraced it, even. It would have made sense to him, the way he’d been raised.”

Dante squinted. “As a demon?” 

“Exactly. Just…bear with me, all right?”

“Yeah. Whatever. I’m listening.” He actually was, offhand as it sounded. Apart from offering insight on a past that had always both eluded and defined Dante’s shrouded, conflicted existence, there was something captivating about Vergil when he warmed to a topic, the eager way he expressed himself in the full bloom of his passion.

Dante watched him on the oblique, careful not to expose himself as doing so.

“In the demon realm, births are almost always singular. There’s a clear heir, clear lines of declension and descent. Not that these aren’t disputed from time to time.”

“Same as in heaven.” Dante shrugged. “Or on earth, for that matter. Give or take.”

“True. And yet…demons are…something of a fractious breed, to put it diplomatically, so they rely even more on certain traditions; codes and safeguards to keep general societal order—both spoken and unspoken. Hierarchies are one. Rank is one. Social roles are another. There’s still insurrection and infighting, of course, and certainly more so than on earth or in heaven, but these customs keep it to a general simmer. At the top, of course, sitting on the lid of the whole pot, keeping it down with his weight—is the demon king.”

“Mundus.” The word came out gritty with resentment.

“Yes. For the last nine thousand years, at least. And for most of it, our father was right beside him.”

“Legendary hero, huh. Sure took him long enough.”

“The archaic texts refer to Sparda and Mundus by a phrase that translates literally as ‘blood brothers’, but one thing I’m still honestly not clear on is what that signifies. The phrase is a contronym, in the first place—it can mean either a blood-related relative or a non-relative accorded the status by blood vow. I don’t know what it means in an ancient demonic sense. I wasn’t able to discern definitively from context, and while it’s easy to confirm both Mundus and Sparda’s lineage as aristocratic, Sparda’s actual parentage is inconclusive—probably because Mundus had him excised, purged from the heraldic roster for his crimes. If those records still exist, neither Kat nor I have been able to retrieve them.”

“Wait a minute. Back up. You think that fuck could be our _uncle_?”

“It’s as possible as not. Not like mom and dad would ever mention it. He certainly wasn’t getting invited to the house for Thanksgiving.”

Dante snorted, trying to picture it through a cracked Norman Rockwell lens: Eva with a pumpkin pie (his favorite) and a Granny Smith apple pie (Vergil’s), setting them out to cool while he loitered and orbited her, just to be told he had to wait until after dinner. Vergil sitting at the table doing no such thing, because he’d determined her logic was sound and he never re-sought answers for things he already knew. Mundus as the indulgent uncle, smoking a cigar and slipping them candy from his pockets whenever their parents weren’t looking. Sparda, extending the knife and fork to him, graciously handing over the high human honor of turkey-carving.

_Yeah, maybe not. But he invited himself to the house eventually, anyway, didn’t he._

Dante felt himself bristle at the sudden intrusive visual memory of his mother’s murder, and shunted it furiously out of his mind. His hands clenched at his side, but he was otherwise still. Vergil, not privy to his thoughts, and immersed in his narrative, continued without noticing the flinch that lit his features.

“Alternatively, Sparda could be a half-brother, an adopted or foster brother, a distant relative accorded the honorary status of a sibling, or no relation at all. One interesting feature of demonic culture is that declared or decreed brotherhood still carries social weight to equal natal brotherhood, if proven and pledged in bloodshed—almost like a marriage—so I’m not sure it matters, except as a curio.”

_I’m not sure it matters because who fucking cares. _

_Oh right, of course. My brother._

“Either way, they were close.” Vergil paused, deliberately. “In fact, there’s ample evidence to suggest they were actually…very close. The texts are more explicit about the physical nature of their relationship than the biological nature of it.”

_Wait what_

Dante lifted his gaze and stared. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

Vergil shook his head slowly. “Think about it, Dante. Mundus’ vengeance, his fury over dad running away with mom…doesn’t it all seem rather…disproportionate? I mean…miscegenation is one thing, and I’m sure that’s part of the story, but that kind of vicious reaction speaks of a betrayal that goes beyond moral or even political. He killed Eva in a blind rage—literally tore out her heart and consumed it raw—”

Dante flinched again as the memory glitched back into view.

“—But he didn’t kill Sparda. He dragged him home to the demon realm, imprisoning him to punish him for eternity, keeping him alive and close. Why? Because it was personal. It was an intimate revenge for him, not one of morality or duty.”

“So let me get this straight. You’re telling me our mom was basically murdered by a psycho ex on a rampage, like some _Dateline_ shit. And you’re telling me that our dad and Mundus were…” Dante broke off, with a swallow and a grimace.

“Lovers,” said Vergil. “Yes.”

“I was gonna say _fucking_, Vergil, but way to make it even worse.”

“Fucking, then. Whatever you want to call it. It just seemed like an inadequate way to characterize a relationship spanning nine thousand years.”

“What the fuck,” Dante muttered, pushing the heels of his hands against his eyes. “No. Just no. That’s insane. You must have read it wrong.”

“I’m afraid not. The arcane demonic tomes and scrolls are pretty explicit on that point. They don’t leave a lot to interpretation. There are even some…illustrations.” Vergil averted his eyes tactfully at the word, letting his gaze find the windows.

“Wow, really? Really? Okay. Okay, fine. Great. So our Dad’s in some old school demon porn with the guy who killed our mom. Everybody’s got a fuckin’ past, huh? What the fuck.”

“It’s not all pornographic,” Vergil said. “Some of it is merely what I’d call romantic, and some of it is admittedly erotic, but very tasteful as these things—”

“Enough, okay? I get it. Fuck.” Dante held up his hands, then pushed one back through his hair, unsettling it to match his mood. “Was that it, Vergil? What you wanted to say so bad? What you needed to tell me? Was this what you interrupted our evening for?”

“Our evening,” Vergil repeated softly.

“I said what I said,” said Dante, without looking at him.

“No,” said Vergil, and he could feel the encompassing presence of his brother’s gaze enfold him, almost the way he felt his sweater. “It’s on the way to the point. I’m getting there.”

“Can’t wait.” The words were sardonic, laconic, but inwardly he felt an uneasy dread. _For fuck’s sake, is it something even worse?_

“I didn’t tell you any of this to upset you, Dante.” Vergil sounded sober, contrite. “But I think it’s important for us to understand the true nature of Mundus’ vendetta, so we don’t underestimate it. And I had a second reason, which was that I wanted to make an illustration—”

“Don’t say _illustration_,” muttered Dante, scrubbing his face, cringing into his palms. From childhood, he could only recall a vague, simplified image of his father, and Mundus’ human body, Kyle Ryder, was almost certainly a borrowed shell barely holding together at the seams, so at least_ those_ mental pictures were hard to conjure.

“Listen, all right?” Vergil was resolute but gentle, and in spite of everything, Dante felt himself lift his eyes and attune. “The moment you and I came face to face, I immediately realized the nature of my feelings and instincts toward you. They were there, undeniable. The love I felt was fraternal, but not platonic.” 

He paused. “That night in bed, I consulted the library.”

Dante knew the “library” wasn’t a physical room, but a series of deeply encrypted hard drives requiring retinal scans and a firstborn to access. They held everything his brother had amassed—books by scholars both angelic and demonic, as well as primary source documents; all the scrolls and tomes and texts that Kat and he had collected—from the wasting ruins of Paradise, from arcane antique underground booksellers, from crumbling archives. The hard copies, artifacts, were locked away in a vault that even Kat didn’t know the location or combination of.

But Dante did. Vergil had shown him at once, without hesitation.

_They’re too precious to see regular use_, his brother had said. _Even with gloves_, he added wryly. _And it’s too risky to have them anywhere they could fall into the wrong hands._

_Ungloved_, Dante had said.

Vergil had smiled. _Almost certainly_.

“Almost everything written on Nephilim in the past was destroyed as part of the extermination campaign. What survived is sparse, and I found nothing about twins.” Vergil paused, fingers steepling, index fingers briefly pressed to his lips. “So I read up on seraphic and demonic culture instead. It was…illuminating.”

He fell silent for a beat, lips parted, eyes angled to the side as if lost in thought, and Dante spread his hands and waggled his head, sarcastically prompting. Vergil seemed to snap out of it, without visibly reacting to the insolence of his gesture or expression.

“Though it’s never outright stated, the angelic orders seem to practice romantic love much like humans do, though they’re fairly ambivalent about human taboos—neither condoning nor condemning sorophilia or fratrilagnia, for instance—”

“That would be sister-fucking and brother-fucking, in English?”

“—but demons are more carnal, formal and hierarchical, and fratrilagnia, in particular, is considered…wholly acceptable as a practice. Not least because it tends to keep the peace. Sibling revelry, instead of sibling rivalry.”

Dante looked askance. “Vergil, they’re demons. They’re a little degenerate in general, aren’t they? Doesn’t sin and fornication sort of figure in the description? I mean, you’ve got Lilith—two tons of pure pestilence shoved into a 120-pound past-prime porn star meatsuit, and her sketchy sex club—”

“That you never patronized.”

“Beside the point.”

“You’re right—demons are by nature carnal, primal, willing to indulge to excess in various vices. And you’re half one.”

“So are you.”

The air had taken a turn, all at once, the way it always seemed to—the atmosphere going heavy and intoxicating between them again, like ether, like liquor. Dante felt a maddening urge to push up from the wall and show his brother the true meaning of the word _excessive._

In the next uneasy beat he thought about Vergil’s cock and wondered if he’d be the one learning vocabulary definitions.

He stayed where he was; grounded, with the wall at his back.

“But let’s talk twins,” Vergil said, as if there hadn’t just been a frisson, a searing, sizzling fissure in the main conversation. “Twins run in seraphim about as often as human mammalians, roughly—say between ten and fifteen twin pairs per each one thousand births. Not common, but not so unusual.” 

He paused. “Here’s where it gets interesting. In demon bloodlines, twins of any kind are exceedingly rare. What’s more, when they do happen, it’s more common for demon twins or triplets to be born conjoined. Two-headed, essentially. Chimeric.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen some of that. You don’t forget the first time you see a lady with three heads and six tits. Or a three-armed guy with two dicks. I bet you know the name for that.” 

“Diphallia,” said Vergil, at once, not disappointing him.

Dante grimaced. “Thank fuck that’s not us.”

Vergil laughed uneasily. “Agreed. Much as I loved having you inside me, there’s such a thing as being too close.”

_Oh, Vergil’s got jokes._

Dante felt the bloom of heat—up over his cheekbones and down into his loins, as his blood stirred at the words. “Stay on topic, all right?”

“Sorry.” Vergil blinked. “Where was I? Parthenogenesis _does_ occur in demons, fascinatingly, on the other hand, but that’s neither here nor there.”

_He looks a little bit bummed he can’t get into it. Maybe later, buddy._

“True, perfectly-formed identical twins are a phenomenon in the demon realm, an absolute rarity. It’s why Mundus would never even stop to think there might be two of us, Dante. Twins didn’t run in Sparda’s family—they ran in Eva’s.” 

Vergil said this last with a rapt, revelatory satisfaction.

“Okay.” Dante shrugged. “But they _do_ happen?”

“Yes. And when they happen, they’re considered a blessed anomaly. Two heirs instead of one. Two swords. Two credits to the father. But there’s a danger there, too—which is that you have two heirs of utterly equivalent status and strength. You wouldn’t want such powers at odds. But fortunately, there was…a historical disinclination for them to be, since there seems to be a strong innate propensity toward demonic twins becoming lovers.

“Therefore, in the demon realm, a consanguinamorous twin bond is considered not only highly desirable, but auspicious; even actively celebrated.”

“Consang-what now?”

“Incestuous,” said Vergil, without ceremony or apology.

“Oh,” said Dante. “Yeah, that’s on me. Should have guessed that one.”

“Through the ages, demon philosophers have written quite a bit on the subject. _Blessed is the king whose house will always be in harmony, whose sons will never come to fratricide or strife, each because of their unbreakable devotion to the other, over all else—in all worlds and under every sun._ You see, Dante, if your sons are…enmeshed, the hope is they’ll never be enemies. Never fracture the dynasty, fight over the throne, or split the lineage. Protect each other and the bloodline always, fight for each other with ferocity beyond measure.”

Dante inwardly shuddered at the words; they resonated in his marrow with some kind of elemental truth.

“Not unlike the Sacred Band of Thebes,” Vergil added absently. “The Army of Lovers.”

“Army of Lovers,” said Dante, suddenly, after a beat, blinking.

“Yeah,” said Vergil, turning to look at him, almost confused.

“They were this…dance music group, way back in the day. Kinda like ABBA with pop goth visual vibes. Had this one song: ‘Crucified.’ Catchy as fuck. When we were little kids, Mom used to play it in the car and sing along really loud. I remembered the song, that day at Paradise. I heard it, and it’s been stuck in my head ever since. I just looked it up the other day. They were named after that. The Thebes thing.”

“I remember,” Vergil said slowly. “I remember that song.”

“Good.” Dante rolled his eyes. “Now it’ll be stuck in your head too.” His fingers touched the fraying spot again. “Mom was a raver,” he added quietly. “I remember those stupid jeans.”

Vergil smiled. “I’m actually seeing people wearing them again, like it’s some big retro thing.”

“You gotta be fucking kidding me.”

“You see? Humans can’t even be trusted to dress themselves. They’re easily led into tragic decisions by an untrustworthy authority.”

“Yeah? What was mom’s excuse?”

Vergil shrugged. “New to this world, I guess. Trying to fit in.” 

“I know how she feels,” Dante muttered, almost to himself.

“She wasn’t a real redhead, either. But it worked for her.”

“Wait, _what_?”

Vergil seemed amused. “You sound more horrified by that than anything I said about dad.”

“It’s all kind of horrifying, to be fucking honest.”

“All of it?” his brother said quietly.

Dante paused, looking to the side with a shrug. “Maybe not all of it.” His hand slowly caressed his arm, up and down the lux cashmere.

The fire crackled and snapped into the silence, and he was distantly pleased with himself—that he’d done it right, that it had kept burning strong, and hadn’t foundered. That he could bring warmth into their world as well, with just a good example and a little bit of study. Maybe he’d never learned some things, but he didn’t have to be shown twice.

Vergil was nearer to the fireplace, and its light spilled over him lovingly, almost lasciviously, strobing faintly on the side of his face, like stroking fingers.

_Don’t be jealous of fire. You are fucking as crazy as they said if you are jealous of fire._

His brother seemed to have unconsciously relaxed, uncoiling, unwinding; settled back in his silk robe as he basked in the glow. Dante’s eyes traced the lapsed lines of his lapels, which had relaxed as well, revealing his chest.

_Feels nice, right. Yeah. I did that for you. _

“What I found suggests it’s not only normal, Dante—it’s natural.” He still held forth with equal sobriety, but now it was more lulled, indulgent. “If you think about it from a biological perspective, it makes perfect sense. Over all those demonic millennia, evolution _would_ control for hostility and competition, and greatly favor altruism and cooperation, just as it has for countless other species, in countless other ways throughout natural history.

“Surely it’s all the more essential for Nephilim—the nuclear weapons of existence. It would make sense to evolve an organic safeguard, like mutually assured destruction. Except it’s…mutually assured devotion.”

“So much for your Westermark Effect.”

Vergil laughed abruptly. Dante liked it when he laughed like that—not wry and knowing or merely amused, but taken aback by something he found personally hilarious. To be fair, he liked all the other ones too. 

“You did question whether it would apply. Insightful of you.”

“Yeah. And you already knew it didn’t.”

Vergil had been privy to all of this before his awkward, conflicted confession, had known but kept silent and circumspect, letting matters play out however they would. Dante doubted he’d have been capable of the same, in his place.

Dante sat forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “So is there a catchy name for this other phenomenon? Like the Demon Twincest Theorem or something? Schrödinger’s Brotherfucker?”

Vergil’s resulting chuckle was rewarding enough to make him vow to crack shittily wise until the end of time. “None that I could find. Feel free to coin one.”

“Yeah, I’ll just work on that and get back to you.” He allowed a half-smile to manifest, hidden in the semi-darkness. “Riveting and informative as that was, Verge, I don’t think you ever actually got to the point. Unless that was the point, and in that case...why are we still talking?”

“Dante, what I’m telling you is that our father would most likely approve. Of this.” Vergil paused. “Of us.”

“And that how I feel about you isn’t free will.”

Vergil stared, almost disbelieving. “When is love ever free will, Dante?”

“I didn’t use that word.” Dante said it reflexively, but it felt a little less convincing each time it hit his own ears, as if with every utterance the varnish wore off more.

Vergil ignored him like it was his second job. “Most things in life are free will, no matter what people say. You choose your path, your philosophy; you choose what to engage, what to enshrine, what to eschew. What you’ll endure. It’s all free will.”

He paused. “Out of everything in existence, love is the one thing that absolutely isn’t. You can’t choose to love someone, any more than you can choose not to. When you love someone, it’s a bond forged by nature—a foregone conclusion of genetics and chemistry. And it’s wonderful, Dante.”

“I gotta say, Verge, you just wasted a whole lot of words.”

Vergil’s pale gaze reacted liquidly; still water’s quiet flinch at a raindrop. He looked hurt, discernibly, for the first time.

Dante sought his eyes hastily, his voice shifting. “Because I already told you I don’t care. I don’t care if it’s right or wrong. I don’t care if it’s natural. I don’t care if it’s normal. And I sure as hell don’t give a shit if Sparda would approve or not. Fuck that guy.”

“What do you care about?” countered Vergil, and there was a faint, demanding inflection to the words, as if the question was global and rhetorical instead of situation-specific.

_What **do** you care about, you catastrophically damaged nihilist. Forget wasting words. Am I wasting my time?_

“Everything,” said Dante, before he could stop himself. “Everything except that.” He paused, swallowing, feeling his anger lodge in his throat. “He knew, Vergil. He knew they’d find me. He put me in plain sight. He practically handed me over to them.”

“It was likely,” said Vergil quietly, after a beat of silence. “And I think he knew that much. I also think he believed you’d be ready when they came for you. And you were.”

“Was I, though?” Dante turned to look at Vergil, eyes bright with wounded ire. “Sure, I’ve killed plenty of demons, but was I ready for fucking Mundus, and an army? Would I even be here if you hadn’t sent Kat after me? If you hadn’t found me just in time?”

“But I did.” Vergil shook his head. “Maybe he counted on that, me finding you—or us finding each other. Maybe it all went exactly according to plan.”

“There was no fucking _plan_, Vergil. He just threw us out there—you to the wind and me to the wolves.”

“Maybe so. But since he’s not here to interrogate, it’s all speculation.”

Dante’s fist curled at his side. “He’s alive, isn’t he? Somewhere? Isn’t that what you said? Enduring eternal torture, a fate worse than death, somewhere in Limbo? We should go find him, so I can punch him in the face.”

“Sidebar,” Vergil said, suddenly, and paused, frowning, as if something had only just occurred to him. “It is strange, isn’t it, that when I told you about our parents—that our mother was dead, and our father was imprisoned for all eternity—that it was neither of our first thought to rescue him.” He shook his head slowly, wonderingly. “In fact, I don’t think it’s ever come up.”

“He’ll be all right,” said Dante flatly. “I’ve decided he’s a dandelion dad.”

“Maybe there’s some…physical or epigenetic memory…there. Our bodies holding a childhood resentment even when our minds didn’t consciously remember.”

“Yeah, well, _betrayal_ seems to sorta seep into the bones, you know?”

“Agreed.” Vergil looked down at his hands. “Especially parental betrayal. That’s a primal wound.” He hesitated, brow knitting gently, lips parting. “And that brings me to what I need to say, Dante. I promise that’ll be all. Just give me one more moment. Please.”

_Take all the time you need_, he wanted to say. Something civil and empathetic, like he knew Vergil would say to him were their positions reversed. But he was worried it would sound wrong, coming from him; contrived or insincere, no matter how much he might have meant it. Instead he just nodded. Gestured vaguely with a half-flung hand. “Yeah, sure. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Like angels, demons are a gladiatory race—militant, like Ancient Rome, a society built on orders and armies. Aristocracies. In demonic culture, in the case of divine twins, it’s understood that these are two parts of a single soul—and each twin traditionally had a role to play: one would be the vanguard, and one would be the visionary. Our mother’s human theory of child psychology and personality, the way she assigned it, would have aligned perfectly with what Sparda grew up knowing, what he was raised with. It’s no wonder he took it to heart.”

Dante shook his head, lips twisting. “Getting pretty fucking sick of that guy’s name, I’m not gonna lie.”

Vergil’s eyes dropped, and he hesitated. “Here’s the thing, Dante. He went to you first. Before he did it.” 

“What do you mean, he went to me?” A slim qualm slid down the length of his soul, like the edge of a knife, like a single rivulet of cold rain down glass.

“Our father went to you. He took you aside and told you that he had to separate us, that he had no choice. He said that one of us could go to a big house and live with the people there, but the other would have to go to an orphanage.”

Dante stared. _Stop_, he wanted to whisper—stricken, incredulous—but he couldn’t seem to remember how to speak. It was all coming back to him, suddenly, in a rush of broad, childish strokes, like the memory was wrought in crayon.   
  
“And you said…” Vergil’s voice hitched, and he normalized it forcibly in the next moment, swallowing as if it had been an anomaly. “You said that I should be the one to go to the big house. That you’d go to the orphanage. You didn’t even hesitate.” Vergil looked down, his face contorting. “And by the time he told me this, Dante…you were already gone. He’d gone to St. Lamia. Walked up to the gates, and just…handed you over.”

His face twitching with emotion, eyes trained on his brother, Dante could do little but listen.

“I remember it like yesterday.” Vergil’s voice was soft, almost dazed; his gaze defocused. “There was no warning. We’d just been playing together that morning. I said I didn’t want to be separated. Why couldn’t we just go together, I asked him. Stay together. We’d go anywhere he wanted, I promised. We’d both go to the orphanage. I begged him to take me to you.” Vergil swallowed again, almost imperceptibly. “He wouldn’t.”

A loud snap came from the fireplace, sparks shooting, first in a wild bouquet and a wiry surge, then resigning to their fate, leisurely drifting upward on their way to lose themselves and die in the night. Dante felt a part of himself go with them.

“Father knelt down to my level, I remember. He said,‘Your brother loves you, Vergil. More than anything on earth or heaven, or hell, for that matter.’ And then he fixed my coat and…touched the space between my eyes and said, ‘Never forget that’.” Vergil huffed out a laugh; bloodless, mirthless. “Then he wiped my memory.”

Dante closed his eyes. “Vergil—” he began, and the word trembled, lost to a soft rumble of thunder.

“And I never did. I forgot my brother, but I never really forget that knowledge. Even when I didn’t know I knew it. It’s like how…when there’s a shadow, there must be something to cast that shadow—even if the shadow is all you can see.” He smiled crookedly. “Sunlight. It was always there, like…sunlight, touching everything I did. Touching my every thought.”

Vergil’s eyes lifted, radiant blue and luminous in the firelight, as they found his own in the shadows and anchored there. “Now, a seven-year-old can’t consent to self-sacrifice, Dante. Not even a Nephilim. So when I say this, know that I’m thanking for your love, not that.” Vergil paused. “Thank you, Dante.”

Dante felt his chest crumple at the words, like his heart was made of paper. “Either of us would have done it.” 

He felt utterly sure of that much, now. “If he’d gone to you first, you’d have told him the same thing. And he knew that. He knew what I’d say. That’s why he went to me instead of you. He’d already made his choice. It was never about us. It was to make himself feel better.”

“To let a little kid absolve him.” For the first time, Dante heard an odd note in Vergil’s voice—bitterness; a foreign invader he didn’t want to ever make a home there. It wasn’t like him, and Dante didn’t like it—though he was simultaneously strangely gratified to realize that he knew, somewhere in his marrow, what his brother was like.

Vergil was right, that memory wasn’t only in the mind, but also in the body; steeped in the flesh, soaked in the bone.

“I’d do it again.” Dante heard the steely note in his own voice as the words escaped him.

“I know,” said Vergil, with quiet regret, closing his eyes.

“It was the right choice, Vergil. Sometimes there’s no good choice, just a less shitty one. I mean I came out fine, right?” _Sure I did. Just like a fucking dandelion. Daddy’s little weed. Better me than the hothouse flower. _

Sharp and sardonic as those thought-forms were, there was no contempt in them. At least not for his brother. Vergil truly was everything his father had believed him to be—phenomenal, rare, exceptional. Visionary. Worthy of guarding, championing, upholding. No one knew that more than Dante. _At least we agree on that, you deadbeat piece of shit. Hope you’re enjoying your quality time back home. Let’s hope it lasts another 9k._

In the back of his mind was a thought he didn’t let himself mess with too much—what could less than a decade playing house with their mother really mean to Sparda, weighed beside the context of nine-thousand years? And by extension…

In the wake of his last words, Vergil had fallen silent for a moment, conflict clouding his clear brow. “Brother, if you hear nothing else I say tonight, listen to me now.”

Dante broke off his own dark thoughts and shrugged at him, looking askance. _What the fuck? I already told you I’m listening._

“That so-called theory of child psychology is a bullshit allegory. Pure sophistry. First of all, it’s false analogy: children aren’t fucking flowers. And secondly, no child on earth ever came out of abuse or neglect…or abandonment…unscathed or undamaged. Just more or less able to sublimate it. There is no titanium child.” He paused. “All children suffer, Dante.”

In the shadowy periphery, Dante was struck silent. His lips parted, maybe to protest, but for some reason the impulse died there.

“And to even suggest there is some apocryphal child who can endure any adversity without damage does immeasurable harm. Just by saying that, it creates an expectation, obligates the stoic child to insist they’re always fine.” Vergil sounded angry now, in a new way Dante had never heard—intimately instead of universally, bitterly instead of righteously. “Pretty convenient for a man who wants to leave that child at the doorstep of the wolf, and at the mercy of the world.” 

His voice held a tremor on the last few words that made Dante flinch in the shadows.

They sat in the dreamlike, flickering stillness of the bedroom for a moment; Vergil at one end and he at the other. He began to regret sitting down so far from the hearth—its heat barely reached him here, and its light fell just short of his body. He felt the irrational urge to take a long, scorching shower; to lock himself inside a hot compartment, sink down and close his eyes.

“It was a long time ago,” he said, finally.

“You suffered for me, Dante.”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“You see?” Shaking his head,Vergil whispered it, as if vindicated.

“See what?”

“You’re doing it right now.”

Dante winced to himself as the irony clicked in. It wasn’t even a conscious effort on his part, yet something inside him was driven to minimize, to absorb every blow and keep going, no matter how devastating, to turn every stagger into a swagger, to shrug off his entire shitshow of an existence. _Not that great, maybe, but no big deal either._

And if he was honest, on some level, he’d always been a little self-impressed about it, proud of that about himself; chalked it up as a virtue, not a flaw. Maybe by necessity—he’d had to take his pride where he could find it.

“You didn’t come out fine, Dante. How could you?” Vergil pursued it with almost surgical gentleness, and wounded incredulity. “How could either of us? Amnesia isn’t anesthesia.”

_More of a loner type. A survivor._ Stoic, Vergil had called it. _That’s a compliment, isn’t it?_ But the expression on his brother’s face spoke eloquently, and only of pain. It hurt Vergil to see what he’d become.

He sat with that unwelcome revelation for a moment.

First he was angry.

_What else did I have to be proud of, but not letting the system grind me up and the world grind me down? I didn’t have the luxury of pain, or having fucking feelings. At least not ones beyond rage and indifference. Not like you, you cherished, gold-plated fuck. What good would it have done me to have feelings? Who would have cared? No one. I was nobody’s child, nobody’s problem, nobody’s anything. I was just a weed trying not to die in the darkness, straining for light, growing wild in whatever crack I could find. Guess I really am a dandelion after all._

_No one cared about me, Vergil. Try to imagine that. I bet you can’t._

_Not one goddamn person in the entire world._

But he’d been wrong about that.

Someone had cared. Someone had loved him all along, even when he’d believed there was no one.

The thought came a half-beat later with a fresh bolt of pain, from a new direction; different than the old, engrained, unacknowledged anguish—actual heartache, plangent with sentiment and a bittersweet finish. 

His anger receded all at once like tide, only for a tsunami of regret to come flooding back. 

_I didn’t choose this to hurt you. I was only a fucking kid. I only ever wanted to protect you. You were my world at seven._

He found his voice, somehow, even as he lost his ability to face his brother. “Sorry I came back to you wrong. Sorry I’m messed up.” He shook his head, helplessly. “I did the best I could.”

“I’m messed up too, Dante,” Vergil said it a rush, eager and reassuring.

“Yeah? You seem pretty fucking together to me.”

“Together, I guess, maybe. By all appearances. But not fine. I’ve never been fine, until tonight. Until right now.”

“At least you have normal fucking emotions.” Dante laughed, but it was bloodless, mirthless. He drove his hands into his hair, or his head into his hands—he wasn’t quite sure which. “What I can I say, Verge. Guess I’m a real wire-mother monkey.”

“No,” Vergil said, softly astonished. “No, you’re not.” His brother seemed caught between surprise at the reference and his eagerly emphatic disagreement with it. “I can’t believe you know about Harlow’s experiments. They were horrible.”

Dante snorted softly. “Don’t look so surprised. Everything I know about institutional atrocity I learned from experience, except what I learned from punk rock.”

He was almost startled when Vergil shot out of his chair and came to him, falling lightly to his knees in front of him, grasping his arms, bringing them eye to eye. 

_Like dad did with him. _

He couldn’t shake the visual Vergil’s words had elicited in his mind’s eye, of a small white-haired boy in a blue hooded toggle coat, a lonely little figure, despondent without his brother, staring, uncomprehending, at a firm and unyielding father. A child who was unceremoniously handed his fate without even the illusion of choice or agency. 

That little boy’s eyes were the same eyes holding his own now, with an almost incandescent intensity. He had to look away. 

Vergil chased his gaze.

“Listen to me, Dante. It’s true you had a wire mother, in the orphanage, and the institutions—but not when it mattered. Your formative years, and mine, were full of care, and affection, and tactility.” 

He squeezed Dante’s arms, stroking them slowly as if to illustrate this. Cashmere and his brother’s touch conspired to soothe him, warm waves of contentment radiating from the twin contact points, slowly emanating throughout his tense, unhappy body.

“The core self was already formed and intact. Any trauma sustained after that point is…not superficial, but not catastrophic, either. You didn’t miss some crucial window of attachment. The damage is all reversible. You just have to trust, first. Foremost. First me…and then yourself.”

“I don’t know about all that. I don’t see how my instincts could be good, Vergil.”

“They’re not good,” Vergil said, with earnest but hilarious bluntness. “You named the wolf yourself: trust issues, you called it. Your first instinct is mistrust. That was a survival instinct, once, and it served you then—but now it’s maladaptive.”

Dante’s eyes narrowed. “You know what, back up. What’s your degree in, anyway? Because I’m starting to feel like it wasn’t technology.”

“It wasn’t.” Vergil answered artlessly, as if eager to impart more of himself and his history. As if he only wanted Dante to know him. As if he had nothing to hide, nothing to fear in himself, and no dark corners left unstudied. “Dual degree in undergrad: English and Biology. Minor in history. Masters in Psychology.”

“Are you kidding me? Biology? _English_? Really? Not ‘law’? Not ‘business’ or ‘communications’? Not ‘dot-com startup’? What kind of frat boy are you, anyway? Surprised they didn’t kick you out of Skull and Bones. Lock and Thimble. Hawk and Scrotum. Trout and Coaster. Cock and Toaster. Whatever the fuck.”

“Technology is just a tool, Dante. A means to an end. A true humanist uses whatever resources he has, in order to effect greater positive societal cha—”

Dante snorted, defaulting to derision. “Can you really be a humanist if you’re not even human?”

“Can you be feminist if you’re not female?” Vergil’s counter was so pointed, swift and sure he must have fielded, or at least considered, the question before.

“I…” Dante really wasn’t sure what to say to that. 

“Of course you can. It’s about personhood—understanding and empathizing, conceptualizing a concrete, lived condition, even if it’s not yours. It’s about recognizing universal injustice when you see it.” He paused. “But that’s neither here nor there right now. We were talking about you.”

“Let’s not, and say we did.” Dante crossed his arms, and in the next moment regretted it, as the motion displaced Vergil’s grasp, and his brother took the gesture as a hint to break contact. 

“All right. That’s fine.” Vergil held up his hands. “I’ll talk about myself, then, all right?”

“Yeah, sure. Knock yourself out.”_ That’s me. Screwing myself over since 1997._

Vergil shifted off his knees, down onto the floor, and sat facing him, cross-legged. The room glowed warmly behind him. And there they were, sitting together in the shadows by the wall. He flashed back to when they were children.

His brother seemed to search his face for a moment, then smiled as if he liked what he saw.

“All my life I felt this drive. An ambition I couldn’t define. But it impelled me. It was a catalyst toward mastery—to seek, to achieve. I pursued knowledge and synthesis and understanding, as if to spite the amnesia I had as a child. I told myself I was just making up for lost time, but…it didn’t account for the compulsion, the restless nature of my self-imposed quest—as if there was a finite amount of time, an unspoken hourglass, and I was under the gun to find or accomplish…what?

“I would lie in bed at night, unable to sleep, chasing my own psyche around in circles, trying to grab its tail. I prided myself on insight, sapience, intuition—but I could never truly grasp my own motives. Only that they were primal, instinctive, directed entirely from within. Subconscious, I would later realize, after my memories restored.”

He paused, smiling again for a moment, almost to himself.

“I remembered you, Dante, before I even remembered myself—but then it all coalesced, almost in the same breath.” He laughed softly, abruptly, like the words delighted him. “Which stands to reason, doesn’t it? We’re soulmates in the most literal sense—two halves of a single zygote, but each complete, autonomous. Two halves that, together, form something even greater than the sum of its parts—an augmented whole.” His voice dropped into soft reverence, and for just a moment, he seemed diffident, as if confessing.

“I had never heard anything so beautiful.”

As he said the words, Dante was struck again by how stupidly elegant his brother was, sitting Indian-style in a bathrobe on a warehouse floor.

_I’ve never seen anything so beautiful._

“And I knew. I knew what I’d been so desperate to find, all these years—what my mind had been struggling to tell me, the latent devotion that drove me. You became my every waking thought, and permeated my dreams—even though I could never see you in them, except as you were as a child. I’ve always had vision, a fantastic imagination—but with you, I became positively aphantasic. I knew you must look like me, more or less, but it was impossible to compose a visual, and I couldn’t hold a steady picture in mind. Anything I managed to imagine was transient, maddening.”

“That’s quite the build-up you gave me.” Dante kept his eyes down and his words desultory, afraid his unguarded gaze would betray him, confirming a reciprocal intimacy he yearned to surrender to, but still wasn’t sure he could afford. “How was I supposed to live up to all that?”

“Oh, but you did, Dante.” Vergil closed his eyes. “You surpassed anything I could have imagined. And when I saw you, when I first felt that _stirring_—”

Dante felt a stirring, even now—jarring, violent, intoxicating—at the very word, and the way his brother’s lips moved to make it. _Shit, Vergil. Can you just not?_

“—when we met, and I felt that resonance, that…undeniable surge of passion, infatuation, attraction, adoration…it all fell into place for me.” He exhaled, looking exhilarated. “Nothing had ever made more sense. I was made for you, like you were made for me—cast that way in utero. The only _unnatural_ thing about it was that we ever were parted.” 

Backed up against the wall, Dante stared at the floor before him, listening in restless silence, his throat locked up like a tomb, dry and seized; held hostage by emotions he’d long since forgotten the names of.

_I get the point. You can stop now. Let me up; I’ve had enough_.

But his brother didn’t give quarter, and he didn’t quit until a story was done.

“From the shadows I saw you and I was yours at a glance. You were…phenomenal. Your whole being bristled with hybrid vigor. Your gaze alone was molten. It changed the whole shape of my heart, melting it down around you and minting a new one where you, and only you, could ever fit inside it.”

Dante closed his eyes briefly, then rubbed them, hiding them.

“Oh, I’d expected to love you, brother, but not like this. Not like I did that day, and not like I do at this moment.” He felt a jolt that lit his entire body as Vergil’s gloved hand quietly found his, fingers entwining with his own. “The universe wanted this reunion, Dante. Every force of nature conspired to guide me back to you.”

“I’m glad,” Dante said, after a moment’s difficulty. “I’m glad you found me.”

He remembered holding his brother’s hand as a kid, with the easy, impulsive affection of little boys. Grabbing it whenever he wanted to run somewhere or do something, pointing with the other, and Vergil always agreeing. Always game and at his side. Those memories were warm, but a vastly different warmth than the one he felt now that they were all grown up, and the naked press of Vergil’s palm against his own felt less like a security blanket and more like a beautiful obscenity. 

On some primal, unspoken level he was furious at the chaste nitrile barrier that kept his brother’s flesh from his, blunting sensation.

“You see how devoted I can be to a vision. To an ideal.” Vergil searched his face slowly, the weight of his gaze a near-physical caress that made Dante shudder inside. “Imagine how devoted I would be to a person.”

“I don’t have to imagine.” Dante remembered the rush of tangible amorous force that had flooded from his brother in the aftermath of the act, a force that somehow felt even stronger and more daunting than their Nephilim power.

“I trust you, brother. I trust you with everything. If you’ll only trust me, we can re-mirror each other, Dante. I can see myself through your eyes, and you can see yourself through mine. We can find ourselves again, in each other. We don’t need anyone else.”

“Re-mirror?” Dante’s brow creased as he forced himself to attend the topic, even though his loins were suddenly thrumming, shot-through with tension like high-voltage wires. “This sounds like more orchid-dandelion shit.”

“It’s a…psychological concept, yes, but—” 

“Don’t tell me about it.” Dante raised his gaze to Vergil’s, feeling the heat in his eyes, warming their blue to tropical heights. Hearing the note of dark, earthen pleading in his voice. “Not right now. I swear on my life, it’s not that I don’t care, and it’s not that I’m not interested, I am, I just—”

_I need to switch languages, baby. I need to go back to my native tongue for a while._

Vergil paused, then nodded readily. “I understand completely. I’ve already said too much.” He looked faintly chagrined; amused at his own expense. 

“It’s not that,” said Dante quickly. He was fumbling around in the conflict and chaos of his head, still trying to find more words to embellish those, the right ones, when Vergil opened his mouth to speak again.

_Stop, already. How the fuck are there any words left, after that? No wonder I can’t find any—you fuckin’ used ’em all._

“You need time, and space, brother. With all that’s happened between us, everything I told you…maybe it’s all just too much for one evening. Tonight has been…a revelation, but maybe it’s best for us to sleep on things. Night is the mother of counsel, after all.”

_What the fuck_

“Take the bed, Dante. I’ll take the couch.” Vergil smiled faintly, looking down at their joined fingers. “Let me tuck you in and give you a goodnight kiss.” The smile broke a little, along with his voice. “For all the nights no one did.” He gave Dante’s hand a slow squeeze, in preparation of letting go. Dante tightened his grip at once, holding fast, preventing him.

This time the right words were easy.

“You’re not going anywhere. And neither am I.”

His brother gazed back at him, eyes lucid, lips parted; wordless, waiting.

“Take me to bed already.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” whispered Vergil.


End file.
